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allysunny · 4 months

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(You're) My Antidote Pt. 2 | Miguel O'Hara x Fem!Reader

ˡᵒᵛᵉˡʸ ᵐᶦᵍᵘᵉˡ ᵃʳᵗ ᵇʸ ᴷ⁵ⱽᵉʳˢᵉ ᵒⁿ ᵀʷᶦᵗᵗᵉʳ

ᵖᵃʳᵗ ¹ | ᵖᵃʳᵗ ² | ᵖᵃʳᵗ ³

Synopsys: It has been a few weeks ever since Miguel saw you glitch due to the antidote he'd given you. He's far too afraid to face you, and hasn't seen you in a while. Peter B. Parker talks some sense into his head, reminding him of what's truly important.

Words: 2.6k words

Warnings: Angst, fluff, exhausted-Miguel, but also very soft-Miguel, Peter B. being a great father and having actually good advice, pain and screaming, syringes, blood, untranslated Spanish (please correct me if any of it is wrong!). Do mention if I forgot something!

A/N: Hey everyone! So, I've finally gotten around to write Part 2 of this fic (I had nearly forgotten about it, so I'm very, very sorry for the delay), but here it is! I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope it was worth the wait!

“Miguel?”

The voice that called out to him was gentle, soft. The one voice he could listen to for hours and hours without ever getting tired.

Yours.

“Miggy… Wake up, my love…” He could feel your soft, deft fingers brushing his brown locks away from his face. You liked to get a good view of him at all times. You played with his hair for a while, and he hummed in satisfaction. He’d stay like this forever if he could, lost in your embrace and your touch, time suspended just for the two of you.

“Miggy, wake up… C’mon, we have things to do…”

No, all he had to do was stay in bed with you, while you ran your fingers through his hair, massaging his scalp and making him forget about all his problems.

And then you tugged on his hair harder.

“Miguel?”

No Miggy? And why were you tugging on his hair so harshly? What was happening?

Ouch – that’d been a particularly hard tug. What the shock were you up to? It was far too early for you to be playing these sorts of games with him.

“Miguel? Miguel!”

Miguel’s eyes flashed open, and he blinked away the sleep.

Before him, was a red-haired baby, staring curiously at him, and back at her hand. Peter B. Parker quickly scooped her in his arms, talking to her in a soothing voice.

“C’mon Mayday, you’ve played with his hair enough. Let’s not hurt dad’s boss, alright? Give him a break.”

“¿Que coños estás haciendo aqui?” Miguel grumbled, running a hand through his now messy hair. It was bad enough he was asleep and not actually next to you but having mistaken Peter B.’s voice for yours annoyed him to no end.

“Jessica asked me to check up on you. According to her, you weren’t even supposed to be here.” Peter replied as his child climbed all over him and pointed her tiny web-shooters at the wall. “

“Yeah, well, I’m working. Not sure if you’re familiar with the concept,” he grumbled again, facing the monitors in front of him. Files and files and files on you, your health, your life, your family tree, his family tree, his DNA, just anything he could get his hands on. He’d fallen asleep on top of papers, each with a different combination of chemicals and elements, all of them experiments on a new antidote for you.

Failed experiments.

“I am familiar with the concept of work, Miguel, but it’d never occur to me to work myself to exhaustion while my wife suffered by herself at home.”

This seemed to get Miguel’s attention. Every single Spider-Person in the Society had warned Peter not to bother Miguel, and most importantly, to keep you off his mouth. Everyone knew what was happening to you at this point.

Pregnant with Miguel’s child, who was slowly killing you from the inside with 50% of his Spider DNA.

And everyone also knew that Miguel had been spending unhealthy amounts of time inside his office instead of at home, by your side. They were, of course, all far too scared to say something. He didn’t seem to budge, not to subtle pleas, not to direct asking. He was hellbent on finding a cure.

Miguel’s nostrils flared and he huffed, raising a finger, and pointing right at Peter’s face.

“This is none of your business, Parker.” He said through gritted teeth, anger evident in his eyes.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t care. You might not care about anyone’s lives other than hers, but I am a husband too. And I would ditch everything – and I mean everything – to be with her at a time like this. Especially if I knew… If I knew she might…”

Miguel slammed his hands down on his desk, the sound echoing through his office.

“Do not finish that sentence. Don’t you dare.” Although he was furious, his voice was nothing but a whisper, and tears threatened to spill from his eyes.

“Alright, I won’t. And then what, Miguel? Forget this. Go home to [Y/N]. She needs you right now.” Mayday crawled on her father’s arms once again, and he rocked her gently. “Think about how she must be feeling. Terrified, all by herself, without her husband by her side.”

Miguel’s shoulders hunched. He was usually a tower of a man. But right now? He felt as small as possible.

“I can’t go back home,” he whispered, shoulders shaking. “I can’t go back home without an antidote. How am I supposed to face her? How am I supposed to look her in the eyes and tell her, her supposed genius of a husband can’t find a cure to the child that’s killing her?” When Miguel turned to face Peter, he was crying, and his eyes were drowning in sorrow. “Her screams, Peter… No man should hear such screams come from his wife… And I’m failing her… I don’t know what to do…”

Peter was stumped.

He’d never seen the cold, apathetic, always professional leader of the Spider Society behave like this. Sure, he seemed to be heartless and a jerk, but he knew that when it came to you, Miguel was willing to hold the weight of the world in his shoulders.

And it seemed like right now, he was.

Peter placed a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Go home, Miguel. Go to her. You really think you’ll ever disappoint her? She knows how hard you’ve been working for her. Just… Go to her, alright? Before you can’t and you blame yourself for the rest of your life.”

Peter’s words did something to Miguel, and he felt his heart ache. Slowly he nodded.

“Thank you.” Nothing else needed to be said. Miguel wasn’t one for words, but Peter recognised the weight behind the ones he had just uttered.

Within seconds, a portal had been opened, and Mayday was happily waving at the man that walked through it.

The house was quiet. Almost too quiet, but he quickly picked up on the sound of the TV coming from your shared bedroom. He took off his shoes and made his way to the source of the noise.

If Miguel were speaking the truth, he’d say he was terrified. He had spent the past two weeks working non-stop to find a cure and had only checked on you three times.

He was dealing with a bunch of different emotions, all gut-wrenching in nature and far too difficult to understand. He didn’t want to see you like this, feeble, weak, laying down in bed as the baby growing inside of you sucked what little was left of your life. He wanted to remember you vibrant and full of life, full of colour and smiles.

He didn’t want you to see him like this either. Tired, exhausted, dishevelled. Dark bags under his eyes, oily hair that had seen better days. He’d been working non-stop for you.

He didn’t want to come home only to tell you he couldn’t find an antidote yet, that you’d have to suffer more. Couldn’t deal with the failure.

But (as much as he hated to admit it), Peter was right.

Although he wasn’t ready to accept defeat, he didn’t want to take the time he had with you for granted. Shock, he’d been doing far too much of that.

He approached your bedroom and his gaze settled on you, neatly tucked in your bed, hands rubbing soothing circles on your belly.

You looked pale. Fragile, He was afraid to even speak, should the quietest whisper tear you apart.

And still, you turned your head to face him, and the whole world lit up within your smile.

“MIggy!” You exclaimed and tried your best to sit up even straighter. You opened your arms for him, and, just like a moth to a flame, he was instantly drawn to you. He kneeled by your side and laid his head near your hands. Your fingers reached into his hair and massaged his scalp, just like you knew he liked.

“Lo siento…” he sobbed into the mattress, afraid to meet your eyes. “Lo siento tanto, cariño…”

“Shhhh…” you tutted, hands reaching to his jaw, so you could cup it and force him to look up. When he tries to look away, you grip his chin with whatever strength you have left, and he finally meets your eyes. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“No, my love, I’m so sorry, I’ve been so focused – ”

“I know,” there were tears in your eyes, but you refused to let them fall. Miguel was always so strong for you. It was your turn to be the strong one. How ironic. “But you’re here. You’re with me. With him.”

“Him?” Miguel asked, looking at your belly.

“I just feel it.” You offered him a smile, and he tried his hardest to reciprocate, ignoring the ache in his chest. Ever since he’d seen you glitch, Miguel had been afraid to show even the smallest of smiles. He was afraid the smallest of joy he felt around you would be taken away just as quickly.

After the first time, he’d refused to give you any more of that godforsaken antidote. Still, there’d been aftershocks. The following days, he’d seen you glitch once or twice, but it eventually faded away with time. On one hand, he was glad.

On the other, it only made him worry more. The glitching was over.

But you were still in pain.

“Mind if I sit next to you?” he asked, taking your hand in his and kissing it.

“Only if you shower first. You reek of Spider Society, Miggy, and the sheets are clean.”

He smiled once again and did as you asked, hopping in the shower, and washing the exhaustion and grime of the day off him. When he was ready, he put on a pair of sweatpants and walked into the bedroom, relishing in the way your breath hitched as you looked at his bare torso.

“Necessitas algo, mi amor?” he asked, raising an eyebrow comically. You looked away, cheeks heating up with embarrassment. You’d been married for years, and he still had this effect on you.

“Yeah, for you to get under the covers with me right now. But put a shirt on - you’re distracting me from my show!” Miguel chuckled, and he was surprised at how long it’d been since he’d last heard it.

“What’re you watching?” he asked, lifting the covers so he could sit next to you. He did so gently, afraid to disturb your peace – and the baby inside of you that thank heavens was giving you some rest.

“Pasiones Entrelazadas,” you replied, leaning into him. His touch had you melting, and you pointed at the television in front of you. “Isabella was getting married to Luis, but his evil twin Diego kidnapped him and took his place, and now Isabella thinks Diego is Luis.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, and Marisol, their mom, well, she’s totally on Diego’s side, because if it weren’t for Luis, Diego would be the heir to her ex-husband’s money.”

“And why doesn’t she like Luis? Isn’t he her son as well?” Miguel shook his head, trying to keep up with the plot of another of your wacky shows.

“Well, Luis is actually the son of another man.”

“¿Qué?!”

“So, Marisol actually slept with two men when she was younger. She was married to Xavier, this big CEO guy, but she’s a little slut so she was fooling around with Antonio on the side. Xavier found out and divorced her. She found out she was pregnant shortly after. Luis is Antonio’s son, but Diego is Xavier’s. And if it weren’t for Luis, Diego would be entitled to his father’s fortune.”

Miguel was too stunned to speak.

“[Y/N], mi amor, that makes no sense.”

“Shhhh – Isabella is about to sleep with Diego!” You shushed him again, gesturing with your hands to keep him quiet.

“How can they be twins and still – “

“Shhhhhhhh!”

Miguel sighed.

“Fine, fine. Let’s watch.”

And you did.

For about ten minutes, before you fell asleep on his shoulder – not a rare thing to happen.

With all the care in the world, Miguel eased you down, fetching your pillow and propping it against your belly in the way he knew provided most comfort. He leaned over your body and placed a gentle kiss on your cheek.

Perhaps all would be right. Perhaps you could endure this together, as long as you had each other. Perhaps, all would be okay.

These were Miguel’s thoughts as he drifted to sleep.

And then they were promptly interrupted by a loud, shrill scream, and the body next to him contorting in pain.

“Honey? Honey, I’m here!” He yelled, turning on the lights and sitting up to get a good look at you. You were sitting up as well, hands instinctively wrapped around your stomach. It’d become your priority after you got pregnant – the baby came first. Even if it was the very thing that was killing you.

Miguel could see you convulsing, limbs twitching and twitching, and you kept on screaming. He quickly sprinted towards his home office, opened a drawer on his desk and removed the (original) antidote and its gun, returning to your bedroom in the blink of an eye.

He basically threw himself on his knees next to you and grabbed your arm.

Once you realised what he was about to you, you tried prying your arm from him, crying loudly.

“No!” you screamed, tears streaming down your face. “P-Please! Don’t – Miggy, don –” your words were interrupted as another scream was ripped out of you. You fell flat on the bed as your body twitched, and Miguel had to try his best to keep himself under control. The woman he loved the most was suffering. She was convulsing and screaming some of the most blood-curdling, truly horrifying screams he’d ever heard. And yet, she was begging him not to use the antidote on her.

“My love, I’m so sorry… I have to…” he said, grabbing hold of your arm once again.

“No!” You sobbed, thrashing around the bed, silk sheets flying in every direction. “You’ll hurt him! God – no, please! Miggy, it hurts! Miggy, no –“ Another scream.

And another.

Miguel had two choices. He could stand by and watch as whatever was inside of you killed you. He could simply wait it out and watch as unimaginable pain consumed your every limb. He could wait and see what happens.

He could wait. And it’d be too late.

Shock it.

He did not need to think it twice. Miguel grabbed your arm and injected the antidote in your veins.

You were still in a matter of seconds, breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling with tears in your eyes.

“Miggy?” you whispered; voice nearly broken.

Miguel looked at you and slowly brushed the hair away from your sweaty forehead.

“I’m here, mi amor. I’m here,” he repeated these words over and over again, reassuring you with his voice.

“Miggy… I think…” your eyes teared up once more. “Miggy I… I peed myself…” You closed your eyes and cried silently, looking away from him, which made Miguel’s heart break. You’d gone through thick and thin together, and peeing yourself was going to make him think less of you?

“Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” Miguel got up and slowly peeled the bedsheets from you to reveal your exposed legs.

That’s when all the air was sucked out of his lungs.

You hadn’t peed your pants. Not at all.

That was blood.

A/N: And that's it! I hope you've all liked it, hehehe. I'm sorry if the show seemed real shitty - I used to watch telenovelas with my nana when I was younger, and I swear their plots were all like this. We'd then sit on her porch and discuss whatever wacky plot was going on this time. It was fun.

Anyways, I hope you all have an amazing day ahead!

Taglist

@tarjapearce , @estella-satn , @meganswife , @cold-blooded-girls , @marcswife21 , @edgycatx

I'm not very sure how to tag people, so in case this doesn't work, I'm sorry!!!

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wastelandlovingscenarios · 4 years

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Hello! Can I request the companions reacting to a cute, sleepy female sole who suddenly becomes affectionate (through words or actions)? Pls make them have a huge crush on the ss ^.^

so cute! i love all your requests! (i’m not proud of this(?)) ❤️

“how much farther is diamond city?” sole whined loudly. she didn’t mean to complain, really, but the fact that she’s been on her feet nonstop for 3 days and getting only 4 hours of sleep every night had been killing her. of course, he noticed this and wanted her to catch more z’s but they were definitely vulnerable and short on time, so they had no choice but to keep pushing. he shot her a glance and noticed how exhausted she looked, sole looked like she could barely even hold a gun properly. “we can always stop by a shack or something.” hearing this, soles head shot up, a relieved sigh escaping her mouth. “well, what are we waiting for then?” he yelped as sole grabbed his hand, running to the nearest building they could find, “h-hey! slow down!”

soon enough, they had both settled down in a small house they had found not even a mile away and dusted off the beds that had been laying there for god knows how long. sole stretched tiredly as she made her way to her companion, who gazed out the window for any nearby enemies. he felt his bed sink as she sat next to him, letting out a yawn. “you should really be getting some sleep,” he muttered, “ill keep watch for tonight.” he was expecting her to head back to her own bed but little did he know, it was the quite opposite of what she was told to do.

Danse:

danse felt his body stiffen as sole rested her head on his shoulder, a choked sound escaping his mouth. “hey, w-what are you doing?! this is inappropriate..!” flustered was an understatement this man was feeling. his heart was thumping inhumanely loud, and he felt like he was gonna pass out any minute. “sorry,” sole sleepily murmured, “i just like having you ‘round me..” he wanted to chide her so bad, but something in him wanted to push her to say more, “i-i, um,-“ he cleared his throat, embarrassed, “am i able to know w-why?”

“i dunno,” god, her voice was so soft when she was sleepy, “i feel safe around you.” he felt his face flush 50 different shades of red as he stuttered, “i-i’m glad i make you feel that way..” he allowed his shoulders to relax as she began to drift off to sleep, her voice getting quieter by the second,

“you make me feel more than that, yknow..?” danse felt his body grow rigid as her words repeated in his head, “what do you mea-“ before he could finish his sentence, sole had fallen asleep against him within no time. as bad as he wanted to wake her up to find out the real meaning behind that message, he decided it was a conversation for another day. for now, her words imprinted on his mind, keeping him wide awake for the rest of the night.

Deacon:

he observed how sole laid on his bed and moved into a somewhat fetal position, her eyes not budging from a certain spot in front of her. out of curiosity, he followed her line of vision and realized that she had been staring at his hands, which were currently fiddling with the gun. with a confused look on his face, he joked, “what? are you into hands or something, charmer?” sole let out a soft chuckle as she used an elbow to prop herself up and punched deacon playfully on the arm. “you’re so stupid deacon,” she bantered, a soft smile playing on her face, “but i can’t lie, you do have nice hands.” deacon let out a dramatic gasp as his free hand covered his mouth, “and what about the rest of me? i’m hurt.” rolling her eyes, sole lightly brushed her fingers against his knuckles and soon rubbed his fingers with her thumb. “well, i never said anything bad about the rest of you.”

“heh, guess you can’t get enough of me.” he was beyond nervous, and was more than grateful that his sunglasses hid it. he hadn’t felt this kind of feeling since barbara, and knew there was no escape to his attraction for her, no matter how hard he tried.

“yeah, i guess i can’t.” she said as she continued to draw figures on his hand, her eyes growing heavy. he noticed how sole kept waking up, trying to keep her hand on his as she (unsuccessfully) fought her sleep. with a small smile, deacon laced his fingers with hers as she slowly fell into a deep slumber. his eyes fixated on their intertwined hands, wanting to take in the sensation just a little longer. oh man, he was so ready to tease sole about this the next morning.

Hancock:

he felt arms wrap around his torso from behind and was nearly shocked at the sudden affection. “sunshine?” he felt her grip tighter onto him, “is there something wrong?” sole shook her head and only spoke softly, “nothings wrong, i just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for me,” she nervously tapped her fingers against his abdomen, “i know i’m not the easiest person to travel with, let alone, help every single day.” hancock smiled softly and let out a chuckle, putting his hand on top of hers. “you’re the best person i’ve ever met, and i’d do anything for you. besides, there’s nobody else i’d rather have as my partner.”

“i hope you know i’d do the same for you.” he took in the silence that followed right after, only staring down at her arms that were enveloping him. he enjoyed the feeling of her body against his, and how her arms fit so perfectly around him. after what seemed like forever, sole broke the stillness of the atmosphere. “can we stay like this for a little? i just-“

“no need to explain yourself sunshine, take as long as you please, i don’t mind.” sole only muttered a small, ‘thank you’ as hancock hummed a little tune of approval. he felt soles breath slow down, and he carefully turned around to face her, taking sole into his arms. hancock let out a grin as he moved a piece of her hair out of her face, he never really had the chance to see sole up close, but was glad he was blessed to have that opportunity. hancock placed her onto the bed nearby and sat by her side, her touch still lingering on his torso.

Maccready:

he felt his heart race as he noticed sole staring right at him, a inquisitive look on her face. “uh, what’s up, boss?” maccready began to feel anxious as sole continued to eye him, “um, earth to sole, are you still with me?” sole tilted her head cutely, making maccreadys cheeks turn red. “sorry, it’s not everyday i get to look at you up close,” her eyes fluttered tiredly, “actually, i never had the chance, we never really have time.” she was right, they never really got to see each other eye to eye and this was the very first, and hopefully not the last, time that he’ll get to experience it. he took in her features, and knew that the commonwealth barely had anyone as attractive as sole. sole was really beautiful, almost too beautiful to be existent in the commonwealth.

his train of thought was cut off by soles soft voice, “you’re really attractive,” maccready felt his ears heat up in embarrassment as sole took in the view, “i wonder how you’re still single. i’m surprised i haven’t caught a girl checking you out yet.”

normally, maccready would make some snarky remark or say something like ‘quit it’, but his undeniable and obvious crush for sole told him otherwise. he felt his confidence skyrocket thanks to sole, it really wasn’t everyday maccready received a compliment, especially from the girl he admired. “thanks boss.. it really means a lot coming from you.” he rubbed his neck sheepishly as sole stretched, getting up on her feet to head to bed. oh how maccready wished he could grow the balls to say the same to her. “of course mac, i wouldn’t be lying to my favorite partner!” he watched as she laid on her bed, giving maccready one final stare before closing her eyes. “goodnight, mac.” “night boss.” he felt his heart jump in happiness as he realized how lucky he was to have someone like sole by his side.

Nick Valentine:

of course, nick being the sweetheart he is, had set the bed for her as she changed her clothes in the other room. the bed was in the living room where he was sitting peacefully at, so it wasn’t hard to hear some turning and tossing against the hard mattress. he took a peek at sole who was staring at the ceiling wearily. “having trouble to sleep, doll?” sole nodded as she saw nick stride over to her in no time. he sat beside her bed and opened a book next to the counter, but before he let a single word out, sole had slowly shut the book.

“nick, i wanna talk to you and get to know you as a person. all this time i’ve been your partner, i haven’t really asked about your personal life.” nick sent her a surprised look, “and why would you want that?”

“well to be fair, i have told you a lot about my life so far,” she spoke shyly as she fiddled with her fingers, “and you’re an interesting guy, nick. you’re just so nice and caring towards others. i really do look up to you. no one in the commonwealth has a reputation like you do.” sole was way too nervous to even stare up at him as she continued talking, “well to me, at least.” if nick had a heart, it’d be melting at the words that shot out of soles mouth. he knew damn well that she meant every word of it and no one could tell him otherwise. nick let out a content grin as he spoke with a hint of joy in his voice, “well i guess great minds think alike, don’t you think? i suppose i can do that for you.” he felt so at home with her and he couldn’t place a finger as to why, but he decided to wave it off. nick rambled on about his life as sole felt a sense of tranquility, her eyes slowly closing at the sound of nicks soothing voice.

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edencantstopfallininlove · 3 years

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Lately I’ve Been Wondering

Content Warnings: Pre-Relationship, Long-Distance Friendship, Discovering Something About Oneself, Validation, One Godawful Pun

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[💚Sasara💚] [3:43 PM] Hey

[Mikki] [3:43 PM] Wait, isn’t it nearly midnight over there? What are you doing still up?

[💚Sasara💚] [3:44 PM] Can’t sleep 😓

[💚Sasara💚] [3:44 PM] Also wanted to talk to you about something

[💚Sasara💚] [3:44 PM] I’m not mad btw

[Mikki] [3:45 PM] Okay. Ask away.

[💚Sasara💚] [3:45 PM] So you’re autistic right?

[Mikki] [3:45 PM] Yeah why?

[💚Sasara💚] [3:46 PM] Well I wanted to try and be a better friend to you and all so I looked up some stuff

[💚Sasara💚] [3:46 PM] Tried to get the perspective of other people like you y’know?

[Mikki] [3:47 PM] Ok, but you have to understand that every autistic person is different. They’ll experience different symptoms in different ways.

[💚Sasara💚] [3:47 PM] Yeah about that

[💚Sasara💚] [3:47 PM] I feel like I saw a lot of myself in some of the stuff I read

[💚Sasara💚] [3:47 PM] Like not being able to stomach certain textures

[💚Sasara💚] [3:48 PM] And fixating on specific things

[💚Sasara💚] [3:48 PM] And the little things like how I speak to my appliances and stuff

[Mikki] [3:48 PM] Where are you going with this?

[💚Sasara💚] [3:48 PM] Mikki

[💚Sasara💚] [3:48 PM] ...Do you think I might be autistic too?

[Mikki] [3:49 PM] Well, from what you’re describing, it’s totally possible.

[💚Sasara💚] [3:49 PM] It all just makes so much sense

[Mikki] [3:50 PM] I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure where we go from here. Do you think you want to try and get a diagnosis at some point?

[💚Sasara💚] [3:50 PM] If I’m able to yeah

[💚Sasara💚] [3:50 PM] I feel like it’d explain a lot and save me at least a little grief down the line

[Mikki] [3:51 PM] The best thing to do is to take it one step at a time. I’ll be here to listen if you ever need to talk, Sasara. And I’ll do my best to fight in your corner.

[💚Sasara💚] [3:51 PM] Thank you 😊

[💚Sasara💚] [3:52 PM] For be-leaf-ing in me 🍃

[Mikki] [3:52 PM] 🤦‍♀️ ...I’ll let it slide this one time.

[Mikki] [3:53 PM] Seriously though. Please get some rest. But I’m glad you’re taking this first step!

[💚Sasara💚] [3:53 PM] Will do boss lady!

[💚Sasara💚] [3:55 PM] Thanks again for hearing me out. I mean it.

...

Time passes. It took until Mikki relocated and got together with him, and it took as much fight as they perhaps expected, but Sasara is eventually able to get an autism diagnosis. He sometimes wonders what would’ve been if he had known sooner, but is ultimately at peace with his journey.

Besides, he now knows he has something in common with the most important woman in his life.

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A/N: Happy Autism Acceptance Month! Okay, it’s towards the end, but still...

#selfshipping #self shipping community #self ship positivity #selfship stuff #spectrum selfship #I Write Stuff Sometimes #We Suit Each Other

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sometipsygnostalgic · 4 years

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Nearly done with Persona 4!

All the scenes in the hospital were outstanding.

Some of the fanservice is really getting on my nerves... girls NEVER compare boob sizes. Not any girls I’ve met at least. Perhaps things are different in Japan but I can’t expect a bunch of straight male hornyposting writers to know!!!

All the girls are ALSO really good though (apart from Rise who is 50% great and 50% kind of terrible... never a dull moment).

A discussion on the cast below the cut and why I think they feel different from P5:

[[MORE]]

I had Yu romance Yukiko because I thought it’d be nice, even though we all know Yukiko is married to Chie... my logic was Yukiko’s kind of bland and shy and she has a bad experience with boys, so pairing her with the shy bland protagonist would be positive for them both. Also I find her laughing adorable and hilarious. Reminds me of the squad days in high school. So she’s like a normal teenager.

Chie and Naoto are my fave in the cast. Chie has no brain cells, god bless, but she has a heart and is ready to throw down with anyone who hurts her friends or even that random jerk middle school ex friend. I liked her confidant and she was only removed from my team for two post dungeon bosses; her endgame moves are consistently doing more damage than my protagonist, even on foes that resist physical.

Sadly I only got halfway through Naoto’s social link before I had my free will removed (and I started after the new year event!) She’s the only one in the party I didn’t max out with (...a massive improvement on how i only maxed 2 optional links in p5). The bar is too high and I was already invested in completing some other lonks by the time i got that Courage stat up. However even though we only know her for a bit, as a character Naoto is way cooler than Akechi, and I found it unique that her shadow acted like a child with interests in goofy stuff. Then what little I saw of her confidant had her grandad playing a detective game with her using childhood mementos. It was fun. Anyway, Naoto has been a party stable due to that diverse moveset and those super effective insta kill moves.

Rise is nice when she’s being a navigator. She’s OP but not as broken as Futaba was (getting ambushed and immediately turning it into a Hold Up is too much power). She sometimes acts mature for her age, but she can be judgemental and childish. A good example is at the end of Kanji’s route where he says Rise thought him making dolls was creepy and he had to take time to get her to understand that it wasn’t. Rise made me laugh many times, even in her unlikable moments, so I was happy to max her out. I got her to max JUST in time for her to be able to get the Third persona. I liked her route, better than Ann’s in the next game, but other fans are mixed on it.

The boys are, in fact, alright in this game. Yosuke has the same problem as Rise where sometimes he acts like a turd, but despite his loserness and rampant homophobia (why atlus?) i find him a good friend character who thinks about the situation thoroughly, is usually borrowing the one brain cell Naoto hasn’t hoarded, and who has well written emotions in a lot of cutscenes. I think he is better written than Ryuji in p5, who - while being great at first - ultimately had less chemistry with the other characters and probably deserved to be booted from the team once or twice.

Kanji is best boy! He does nothing wrong, except for calling his mother names, which is pretty wrong. Kanji, stop that. I used him alongside Chie for that sexy physical damage at first, but sadly he became redundant as soon as Chie got more OP and I added Naoto to the team. Kanji’s constantly bullied by his teammates over his shadow self’s bicurious appearance, which is a major negative on the game actually. I maxed out his confidant JUST before free will was removed, but it was too late for him to have the 3rd persona conversation (at least a week later). Not that he’ll see any use.

And at last Teddie. Many people loathe him. In fact, he goes way too far in his newfound goal of “scoring with girls”. I found him adorable though, especially after he turned into a boy. I’m a sucker for those characters who know nothing about the world but are super enthusiastic to explore it. Despite being what Morgana (my avatar) would be based on, Teddie feels more likable, probably because he never picks fights with the other members and he doesn’t have a cocky attitude, but he still has plenty of flaws. I enjoyed how Teddie was accepted and embraced by Inaga as this weird but adorable kid.

On the other social links: Compared to P5 they are useless. I didnt max out anything in P5 apart from Ann and Ryuji’s, so I’m not sure if they all got great at the end. However the non-party SLs are useful in P5 for added perks like massages, dungeon alertness, sp adhesives... Unfortunately the side effect is the game throws sidequest roadblocks at you.

P5 has a formulaic progression where most confidants will have a problem caused by someone else, or occasionally themselves, and a change of heart is needed. I tired of this formula quickly. But it was more involved witg the core gameplay, whereas p4’s confidants - while each unique - only has fusion benefits.

I need to complete Marie’s dungeon and the final area. Wish me luck!

#persona #persona 4

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liam-93-productions · 4 years

Link

In 2016, Liam Payne met with Capitol to play his first solo songs. The one everyone most gravitated toward was “Both Ways,” a midtempo track about a threesome. “It was testing the waters of what we could write about and could say,” says Payne, adding with a laugh, "Going into a meeting and playing a song about threesomes is an interesting place to be, let me tell you."

"Both Ways" also informed how Payne approached his debut album, LP1, which arrived Dec. 6. The 17-track project includes all six of the singles Payne has released since 2017’s “Strip That Down,” and establishes his sound as a modern update to the rhythmic pop of Usher and Justin Timberlake. Though fans have been eagerly awaiting the LP for the past two and a half years, the former One Direction member felt it was important to take time to sit with his music before sharing it with the world.

“This album has grown with me over the last two years -- honestly, some of the hardest I’ve spent on this planet,” says Payne, 26, (...). “[LP1] is about my audience getting to know me.”

Below, Payne details why his album is just now arriving, One Direction's impact on his solo artistry, and the song he feels does the best job at giving a glimpse at who Liam Payne is.

What contributed to the delay in releasing your debut full-length?

It was about finding the right records; I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so that caused a lot of delays. Also, there was one day where I wasn’t very famous, and then there was a day where I suddenly became ultra-famous -- and the transition of that is a bit of a headf--k, really. I never predicted that I was going to be part of the biggest boy band in the world, and that it would be a huge thing that would go on for many years and take my life in a completely different [direction]. When we were in the band, we were literally writing an album in two weeks, and then it'd take a month to record. Finding your sound was a bit of a tricky thing to do; you didn't really know what the audience wanted from you. There’s always that internal fear that you don’t really know what you’re getting yourself into.

How did the reaction to "Strip That Down" help guide the rest of the album?

Going from being in a soft-pop-rock band, and also the weight of the One Direction success on top of you -- and working with a new team and label -- it was difficult to know if people were alright with me moving into the hip-hop lane. [“Strip That Down”] let me let loose a little bit, and push the boundaries as much as I could.

Why did you feel the need to put out an album at all, after having success with your singles?

Obviously it’s a different game these days with streaming, but the problem is, [in order] to tour, you need a songbook, and the quickest way to get that songbook out there is an album. The singles I put out so far are very happy-go-lucky, but didn’t really give you an in-depth look at what I’m about. It was a chance for me to get a few things out that I’ve not really said before.

Like what?

Some of the different struggles and things I've been through, I've kept quiet to myself and dealt with by myself. My life's very heavily monitored through tabloids and whatever else, and people get to know me through other people -- which is quite a different experience, not being able to fully say your side of the story. "Weekend," for example, is about a really dark experience that I had that I'll probably never actually talk about publicly, but it's in the song for people to make what they will of it.

Is there a song you feel best represents you?

“Live Forever” is a really good representation of me. It’s written by a good friend of mine who [reached] a point where he had to make a choice for himself, when you get to that age when you realize you’re not invincible anymore. I think I had been quietly struggling with that the whole time that [my career] has been going on, really, because life got so crazy so quick it just kind of puts you in a very strange frame of mind. The “Live fast, die young” sort of scenario, a lot of artists go through that kind of thing, and it’s not really true. It’s all about how you want to live your life, really, but finding that one person you can lean on through this experience that kind of gets you through and makes you realize “I do want this forever.” That was a real strong message for me, not even through the live or die aspect, but the "to be an artist or to not be an artist" [aspect].

Are there any artists that have inspired you as you developed your own artistry?

I love Billie Eilish’s attitude around the whole idea of what her brand is. Post Malone does a similar thing -- he is who he is, and that’s what you get. He seems like he’s having fun doing what he’s doing, but there’s also a real dark side to his music. I used to speak to him before he was super massive, and obviously we’ve changed our phone numbers, like, 50 million times, but he randomly Instagram DMed me at 3 in the morning saying, “Love you, Busta.”

Anyone you worked with behind the scenes who was particularly impactful to you?

One of the most random ones was Rami Yacoub, who wrote “What Makes You Beautiful.” He doesn’t have any songs [he co-wrote] on the album, but we went into a deep conversation, and I’ve got some songs that I kind of held back because I thought there might [involve] a bit more growth than this album was. The relationship with Rami and One Direction wasn’t always straightforward -- at points it was quite complicated, in a sense. But it makes you feel like you’re still quite grounded, if you still hold the same people around you that you did. I’m definitely going to work with him again.

So now that LP1 is done, how does it compare to what you thought you’d be releasing as a solo artist?

It’s exactly what I wanted to release. There was a time in the band when I was labeled “Mr. Boring,” and now I find myself naked on the side of a bus in London [for a Hugo Boss ad campaign]. In a band, you become one of something and it’s very easy to lose yourself within that, and I think we all had to get that back once we left. You can see that now — look at the way Harry [Styles] dresses, the music he puts out and the message that he sends. It’s a completely different thing. Same for all of us; everybody branched out and went, “I want to be me!” straight away.

A version of this article was featured in the Dec. 14 issue of Billboard.

#liam payne #lp1 #billboard #liam's interviews #13.12.2019

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peachywise · 5 years

Text

nullify

an umbrella academy fanfiction // klaus hargreeves x reader

- part i: the introduction || part ii ⋆ part iii ⋆ part iv ⋆ part v ⋆ part vi ⋆ more parts to be released

- synopsis: A child and a ghost whisperer walk into a diner. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but really it’s just the start of an odd, slightly painful night. Turns out they need you and your power to do something, and Klaus seems way to thrilled and fascinated by you and what you can do. (takes place after the events of the first season)

- notes: lmao how long has it been since i wrote a fic?? too long thanks anyways the reader is they/them pronouns and everything is pretty vague description wise for inclusivity and shit!! also even though this is klaus x reader focused ~romance~ wise i’ll be writing a shit ton with the reader interacting with the other guys like this part is deadass just as focused on number five as it is klaus. let me know if you guys want this as a series??? i won’t write more parts if people aren’t down but i left it open-ended so it could be a series but honestly, it’d be fine as a one-off too so read what you will k love you bye. tw for swearing

link on ao3

________________________________________

“Isn’t that a health code violation?”

Looking up from your book you'd been reading for the past half hour, you heaved a heavy-handed sigh. Sitting on the back counter of the dead dinner you worked at was the least of this shitty establishments problems. “I’ll be sure to let the rats in the kitchen know of your concerns,” you replied simply.

Dog-earring the page of your book, you set it down beside you. Hopping off, you stepped forward towards the counter as the kid who just entered sat down on one of the stools, planting himself with a look of clear repugnance as he eyed his surrounding subtly. Resting your elbows on the counter, you propped your head on your hands and gave a friendly grin, “I’m sure they’d be happy to whip up some Mickey Mouse pancakes, special just for you.”

His face though perfectly deadpanned couldn’t hide the slight tick of annoyance in his eyes. “Just get me a black coffee,” he muttered.

“Coffee will stunt your growth.”

“You’ll be stunted if you keep up this horrible customer service.”

“Ouch,” sarcasm dripped from your tone as you raised your hands up in mock defeat, “the kitten’s got a bit of a bite there, doesn’t he?”

Quite honestly, your day was now veering on to a particularly delightful route you hadn’t expected when you first woke up this morning. You suddenly believed some sort of divine karma was finally rewarding you with some quality entertainment. He could banter— a bit on the aggressive side, but you would take what you could get out of the interaction. You knew it wasn’t going to last long.

“Look, are you going to give me the coffee or are you just going to stand around all day uselessly taking in the air that could be breathed in by more deserving people?”

Oh, so he’s got knobby knees and wit to match.

Letting a slow amused smile cross your face as you gave a lazy curtsy, you casually made your way over to the fresh pot and grabbed one of the porcelain white mugs, giving him a knowing look as you poured a good ‘ol black cup of joe. Setting the pot back down, you sauntered your way back over still holding the smile. The kid rolled his eyes, reaching out a hand as he impatiently said, “thank you,” in a refined and expertly practiced condescending manner. But you didn’t hand it to him. No, instead you casually leaned back against the back counter and took a long sip of the burning hot liquid.

Well, the little tyke certainly did not like that.

In what was an actually flash of blue light before your eyes, the kid vanished from his place on the rickety red vinyl stool and was beside you a moment later, ripping the mug from your hand with such force that caused the liquid to spill over the sides, scorching your hand and splashing it on your already grease stained, 50’s themed uniform. So, he was words and action. You could respect that.

“What, no screaming? Not even another smartass comment?” He half-heartedly asked, his eyebrow quirked slightly as he studied you. It was like he was waiting for some sort of delayed reaction from his little magic trick. While yes, it was a little jarring to see it in the flesh for the first time, the moment he had walked through those glass doors you expected a bit of a ‘powerful’ confrontation.

You knew he was Number Five. You knew he was a part of that Umbrella Academy.

“You know who I am,” he stated in his all brilliant glory. Well, look at that. Seemed he was a real Sherlock as well as a tiny space hopper.

Easily taking the cup of coffee back, wincing slightly as the cold air pressed against the new burn you tried to seem unfazed about, you took a sip and mumbled against the rim of the cup, “I’m a bit surprised you’re here and actually alive, but it’s easy to remember a face that hasn’t aged a day." Setting the mug down on the counter, you pressed a hand to your hip and questioned, “how is that exactly? Did you run from home just to make yourself immortal? Found yourself an Edward Cullen to bite you or something?”

Now, you’ve had people look at you like you were stupid before, but no one with a talent such as him. Even though he was looking up at you, he still mastered that beady squinty little look that read ‘you’re the joke of the earth’. Precious.

“I don’t know who Edward Cullen is, but I’m not immortal, and I don’t have time to explain the whole story to you in detail. Let’s just say I got stuck in time.” Doing his little magic flash again, he appeared back on the other side of the counter, continuing to speak as he added, “Is anyone else here? I assume you’d rather show me what you can do without anyone else around.”

Ah, yes. What you could do. So that was why he was here. Part of you wondered if someday it would happen. That’s why you knew who he was when he first walked in after all. You kept tabs on all of them, at least a bit. Yeah, the whole “Umbrella Academy” was famous for a little while when you were a kid, but most people had since forgotten them and the kids in the academy had grown up and had become almost unrecognizable. Well, apart from Five. And maybe Allison, but hell, she was famous for a while different reason now.

Like the others, you were born October 1st 1989 to a completely unexpecting mother who got the shock of her god damn life. If you were 9 months pregnant in under a minute flat, you’d probably be pretty shocked too. However, you were just stunned that something as odd as that could actually happen and result in you getting powers.

Unlike the others, when your parents were approached by professor evil monopoly Reginald Hargreeves, your mom rejected anything he offered in favor of her miracle baby. She was certain she was the new Virgin Mary despite absolutely not being a virgin and refused to give up that title up. At least at that moment, she didn’t want to anyway.

“You managed to figure out where I worked, and I assume at this point you know my name,” you started, “so why don’t you just tell me what I can do and let me know why you're here so I can turn you down and get back to my book.” Gesturing your hands around the extremely empty diner, you breathed, “I’m a very busy person as you can see.”

Five didn’t say anything, instead just giving you an almost thoughtful look. You didn’t trust it one fucking bit.

Quicker than you would have expected out him, he reached over and picked up one of the plates on the counter and threw it your way with such force you wondered for a second if the reason he'd been missing for so long was because he’d taken up a passionate love affair with baseball. On instinct, damn the treacherous thing, your body chilled as a static feeling pushed out of you, surrounding you in a soft, nearly invisible blue bubble-- your force field. The plate bounced right off and landed on the floor, shattering lamely and loudly.

It was legal to kill a kid who had been missing for years, right?

“Can’t you play a game of catch with the poor kid?” Came a new drama-dripped voice in the door, the little bell ringing softly as he spoke. “His father was a sociopath who didn't pay him any mind, he’s very stunted as you can see. So desperate for the affection and attention of strangers.”

Klaus. He’d been harder to track over the years, but from the feather collared jacket and lack of shirt, you could spot the eccentricity of him miles away.

Taking on a protective stance, you moved from behind the counter and positioned yourself in front of Five, stage whispering to him, “careful, looks like one of the kitchen rats got out. They’re very diseased.”

Klaus tilted his head to the side, his mouth snapping open and his eyebrows rising up in stunned amusement. Pointing at you, he turned his attention towards Five and stated, “I’m wounded! This seems to be going on spectacularly, don’t you think?”

Shaking your head with a slight grin, you started to speak to ream five out for throwing a freakin’ plate, but your words died off on the tip of your tongue when your gross ass boss pushed open the doors to the kitchen, his loud, gritty greased voice shouted, “what did you break out here?” His spine went rigid a bit when he seemed to finally note the presence of two other people, but his eyes quickly glanced at the shattered plate and his face continued to get splotchy and red. “Is that your kid who broke it? Jesus, that’s coming out of your paycheck.”

Wow, that 50 cent shitty plate? How would you ever survive?

Hands slipped around your neck in a hug as Klaus propped his chin on top of your head, his attention fully on your boss. “I’m so sorry sir, you know how it is with kids, gotta get all those angst and deep-seated feeling out somehow. Yesterday we found out he’s been pretending the family cat was his girlfriend. Had to take him to the hospital to get those scratches on his little friend checked out, if you know what I mean,” he smiled, moving away from you to pat the clearly seething Five on the head.

Before the kid could say anything or do something that would get you in more shit, you plastered your own happy little smile on and bent down beside him, wrapping your arms around his shoulder as you continue to address your boss. “He was just upset because he found out I told his teacher about his little bed wetting problem.” Five ripped your arm away with incredible force and stepped away from you both. Sighing dramatically, you rested the side of your face on your palm and slightly shook your head, adding, “It’s so hard, I just don’t know where we went wrong!”

Klaus snickered behind you, while your boss looked properly petrified and regretful about having walked in on the whole ordeal at all.

“Just uh-- forget about it. Clean it up okay?”

Giving him a wink and you stood back up, you flicked your wrist in a lazy salute. “You got it, Boss Man.” He couldn’t turn back around and get back to the back room fast enough.

Turning the face the two once again, Klaus grinned as he said, “brilliant work,” raising his hand for a knowing high five. You happily obliged.

“Was that really necessary?” Five ground out from between his teeth, as you shot him back an incredulous look. “Was it necessary to throw a plate at me?” you retorted, fully not expecting him to reply with, “Yes. It was the only way I could make sure you had a force field.”

Smartass.

Running your hand through your hair tiredly to get it out of your face, you crossed your arms again and didn’t bother to argue anymore. “Just tell me what this is about.” At this point, you were tired and really just wanted to get back to your quiet night. Klaus was also giving you a once over every thirty seconds and you weren’t quite sure what he looked so bloody excited and anxious about.

“I have a theory, and I’d like to test it out,” Five said. Klaus quickly interjected with, “and I’m one of the test subjects,” wiggling his eyebrows as he did.

Narrowing your gaze, you questioned “one of?”

“Well, it requires you, but before I explain, to what extent can you use your powers? Have you done anything more than just deflect things off your field?”

You shook your head, confusion still clouding your words. “That’s all. Some guy tries to knife me? He bounces off. Sometimes I get lucky and he stabs himself in the process. It’s a simple thing.

“How many times has someone tried to knife you?” Klaus asked with a small snort, but Five cut him off with a great little bomb of information. “I’ve done some calculations on how your power works, and I think that if someone like us was in the field with you it might nullify our powers.”Huh.

“And... math makes you think that?”

Five rolled his eyes. You got the idea he did that a fair bit. “I want to test out to see if that’s true, so if you will, please conjure up your field around you and Klaus and we’ll see if it works on him.”

Flashing your eyes to Klaus who almost seemed to jitter with excitement, your eyes got slightly wide when you asked, “wait, there’s a ghost here? Like right now?” You swiveled your head around like you would actually be able to see it.

Klaus nodded his head. “Ben, meet Y/N, Y/N meet our brother Ben.” Pressing a hand to his heart, he added, “forever in our hearts and forever by my side. I am his saving grace.” Turning his head abruptly, he quickly said, “shut up,” to the air-- or Ben, rather-- slicing his hand in a silencing sound.

Raising a hand hesitantly, you gave a flick of your wrist in that direction, squeaking out a small, “Hi Ben.”

“If you two idiots are done,” Five muttered, but you stopped him as you said, “three idiots. It’s rude to dismiss Ben’s presence. You're his brother, be respectful.” Five ignored you. “The sooner we test this, the sooner we can leave.”

Oh, now he was speaking your language.

Shaking out your shoulders, you widened your stance and clapped your hands, saying, “alright, let's go.” Klaus gave some excited little claps as he stepped to your side, telling Five, “field trips are always so much fun!”

Taking in a deep breath, you let the energy seep out of you until that familiar snap surrounded you, this time entrapping not on you, but Klaus as well.

The smiling man quickly went silent.

“So,” you started hesitantly, turning to study his face. “Did it work?”

Multiple emotions seemed to cross his features, and it revealed to you certain hopelessness and vulnerability that was so unfamiliar to you and what you had known about him. It dawned on you at that moment that you had no idea what this meant. To him. To Five. Christ, nerves started to wrack through your body when you realized they could be having you do this just to try and kill you because they see it as some sort of ridiculous threat. Still, that seemed unlikely. No, they needed it somehow.

And as Klaus turned towards you, looking at you as if you were some wonderous figure and not just some crappy diner waiter working two jobs just to get by, you realized that whatever they had been searching for, they had found. Whatever Klaus had been searching for, he had found.

“They’re gone.”

His voice was just a fraction above a whisper, but it sent a chill across your skin as his intense gaze once again studied you with incredible fascination. But as he took a step forward, his hand oh-so-gently reaching for your hand, your focus went away and the force field fell, all the sounds and senses of the real world hitting you all at once.

Five was staring at you both with an odd look you didn’t quite know what to think of.

“Alright."

Clearing your throat, you took a small step back as the fog cleared out of your head, stating back a dull, “huh?”

“We’ll be at your apartment in the morning. Get ready to meet the others.”

Wait, what the fuck?

“My apartment? You guys haven’t even explained what you guys want from me!” You blurted, moving your head rapidly as you looked back and forth between the two.

“I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” was all Five said, as both him and Klaus began moving towards to door, clearly content with what they came here to do. Well, that was nice for them. They could sleep soundly as you sat up in bed all night looking up fucking umbrella academy conspiracy theories to try and convince yourself what happened here was actually real.

“There’s no way in hell you’re getting those Mickey Mouse pancakes now!” You shot back as he exited the door, huffing as you turned around to go clean up the plate.

Then something smacked hard on the back of your head, landing on the ground with a little rattle.

“Oopsie.”

Spinning around, gripping the back of your head, you were about to yell obscenities at Klaus who’d just thrown a spoon of all things, but he was already halfway out the door calling behind him, “I thought your little bubble would just appear like a party trick, bye!”

Idiots. Idiots had just taken over your life.

#klaus hargreeves #klaus hargreeves fanfic #klaus hargreeves fanfiction #klaus hargreen imagine #klaus hargreeves x reader #the umbrella academy #the umbrella academy fanfic #the umbrella academy fanfiction #number five #five

719 notes · View notes

iwritefanficsometimes · 5 years

Text

I Told You We Were Waiting For Someone

So I’m trying to decide if this is going to fit into a wider universe of my in progress afterlife fic, or if it’s just a one-shot with a similar premise. I could 100% fit it in, and I think I might want to? But I’m still thinking about it

This is a really roundabout fic, and has way too much dialogue in some places, but that’s just how I write now, apparently? I did my best. I know that the style changes in a few places, and that’s not in purpose, but it’s not too jarring (I hope) so just give it a chance?

Endgame: DrPepperony, contains endgame spoilers, duh. AO3 link to come.

———————

Stephen going to Pepper and apologizing for the timeline.

Pepper forgiving Stephen and inviting him to have some coffee. “Or tea? Yeah, you seem like a tea guy.”

Morgan wants to know why his cape is like Thor’s.

Stephen tells her it’s because Thor copied him.

Morgan accepts this without question and then calls her uncle Bruce to tell him Thor is a copy-cat.

Bruce doesn’t tell Thor.

Pepper gives Stephen a standing invitation to stop by, because she’s intimately familiar with how quickly Tony can get under people’s skin and burrow into their hearts.

She doesn’t know the half of it.

Stephen stops by once a month or so, and Morgan gets used to the sight of him.

So does Pepper.

She likes it when Stephen comes by and they have a chance to talk.

So does Stephen.

“Doctor Strange, why can’t you use your magic to bring back my dad?”

The question isn’t accusing, she seems to understand that the answer must be a negative, she just wants to know why.

“Because bringing back people from the dead is a very dangerous kind of magic, and if I did it, he might not come back the same Dad you knew.”

She nods, considering this.

“So you can, but he’d just be bad.”

“Yes.”

She nods again and hugs him around the legs.

“If he wouldn’t be bad, would you do it?”

He answers too quickly.

“Yes.”

Morgan stays clinging to him for a minute before she’s satisfied with the answer and Stephen.

“Mom says you can stay for dinner. I helped mix the salad.”

Stephen smiles.

🖥

It’s not until Morgan is nearly 15 that they find the AI.

Turning him on is an accident. If they’d known they would’ve left it alone. Great timing for Tony to forget to label an AI

AI Tony doesn’t remember Morgan, or marriage, or a farm. He’s stuck so far in the past he’s almost unrecognizable.

Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy spend a lot of time talking to this version of Tony, Pre-Ultron, and they find that the more they tell him about the present the less and less he responds.

Eventually Rhodey makes the executive decision to get Friday involved.

She is understandably unsure of her own abilities, but she does her best to bring AI Tony around.

After three weeks of near constant interface, Friday and Tony emerge in their holograms, and Tony still looks down, as much as any AI can be down, but he wants to interact with Morgan.

There’s not much footage of Tony interacting with Morgan, just lots of pictures. Pepper is the one who tells him about his relationship with Morgan, so he can talk to her.

They talk for an hour, and Morgan cries into the shoulder of the Iron Man armour Tony is controlling, and AI Tony is just trying to reconcile himself with a child.

They don’t talk much after that.

Tony is less like a ghost and more like a shell.

Morgan is less like a person and more like a figment.

It makes Pepper and Rhodey both sad to see it.

Eventually, they ask Tony if he wants to go offline.

Tony says yes.

They shut him down and pack him up in a box labeled “Tony.” No one touches it for forty years.

🖥

Morgan is 55 when she’s going through her mother’s personal effects. She finds the box labelled “Tony” and opens it up, curious.

She recognizes the programming that contains an AI immediately. She knows it’s her father’s digital replica.

She puts it back in the box.

Three days later she takes the box back out again. All she has left of her father is a 50 year old hologram, every design he’d ever made, and this AI.

She turns it on.

It doesn’t recognize her, and she didn’t expect it to.

“Hey! Where’s Rhodey? Pepper? I thought we agred I was going offline.”

“Change of plans. Try the house on for size.”

“Are you making me a butler?” Tony souds entirely offended, and Morgan smiles.

“No. You’d be terrible at it.”

“I really would. So what’s the about... whoever you are?”

“I just think it’s time you got to stretch your legs, that’s all.”

“Technically speaking, I don’t have legs. I’m a string of binary code.”

“Don’t get smart with me or I’ll make you share a charging station with Dum-e.”

“He’s still around?” He asked, looking aroud him, and Morgan smiled.

“Interface with the house and find out.”

It was the only permission AI Tony needed, and suddenly things were turning on and off at random, and there were dozen things happening all around the old farm house where she grew up.

“Hey, wait a minute!”

She leaves before he can tell her what he’s indignant about. She shuts down the internet access just in case.

🖥

“It’d take a genius to figure this out. Not that you’re not a genius, Morgan, but you’re in bio-tech, and this is... not that.”

Morgan looks at Harley quizically. “Are you saying you can’t figure it out?”

“Of course I can figure it out, but it’s going to take time we don’t have.”

“What if I said I had someone who might be able to help us.”

“And you’ve been sitting on them this entire time!?”

“It’s... complicated.”

🖥

“You aren’t a little scamp any more. Hell, I think you might be older than I am. Which means I’m really old. Shit.” Tony says to Harley as he sorts through the data they’ve given him access to.

“This will never work, an AI doesn’t have the same creative capabilities as a-“

“Got it!” Tony said, displaying a hologram that... actually looked like it could work.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Morgan smiled. “Great work Tony.”

“Sure thing.”

Harely looks at Morgan quizzically.

Morgan doesn’t look back.

🖥

“And who are you?”

“My name’s Elizabeth. I’m ten. You’re dead.”

“Smart one. Yeah, I heard. Say, Elizabeth, shouldn’t you be monitored by someone with... I don’t know, a body?”

“No. Mom said that I’m old enough to go wherever I want in the compound so long as I don’t do anything that might get me hurt.”

“Like walk into an active training room?”

“Basically.”

“Fair. Alright, well, your mom...”

“Morgan,”

“Morgan-” He said it and suddenly things made sense. “Morgan Stark.”

“Yup, and I’m Elizabeth Stark. You’re Tony Stark. That’s Harley. Hi, Harely. I’m not supposed to be here so don’t tell Mom, okay? Thanks.”

“Elizabeth, come on. Morgan wouldn’t want you to be hanging around in here.”

“He’s right. I’m a bad influence.”

“Shut up, Tony.”

“Watch your language, sir, there’s a lady present!”

Morgan laughed. “You sound like Mr. Rogers.”

“He’s still around???”

“Barely.” Harley mumbled under his breath. “Doesn’t keep him from trying to act like he’s still in charge of everything.”

“Mr. Rogers is bossy. Mom and Harley hate it. Peter says it’s fine. I think he just says that to be nice thought.”

“Sounds like it. Who’s Peter?”

“Oh, he’s Spider Man. You used to know him.” She squints at him, like she’s wary now that he’s not remembering all the parts of the past that he should. “Before you did the snap, you knew him. You gave him his first good spider suit. And then took it away. And then gave it back.”

“Sounds like me. You gonna take her back to her mom?” Tony asked Harley, and Elizabeth whined.

“No..! Come on, Uncle Harley, please??”

“Don’t Uncle Harley at me, you know that stopped working years ago. Come on, we’re doing lunch, and you’ll want to be out of here before Morgan gets an alert.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Harley,” Friday’s voice says apologetically, and Harley sighs.

“Figures. See you around, Tony. We’ve got some stuff to talk to you about later.”

“Yeah, sure thing! It’s not like I’m being held prisoner in my own lab!” AI Tony calls after Elizabeth and Harley.

“You’re not a prisoner, boss. Just on house arrest.”

“How can you call me boss and be the holder of the keys to my cell?”

“Not a prison.”

“Feels like a prison.”

“When given free reign of the house the first time you were brought online, you broke eight different electrical appliance. For the safety of the inhabitants, you’ll have to stay here.”

“We’re not worried about me breaking the lab? I could do some real damage here.”

“But would you?”

“...No.” Tony sighed, as much as any AI can sigh.

🖥

“What’s with the secret keeping Morgan? I feel like a piece of dirty laundry.”

“Captain Rogers would have a lot to say about an AI of you. I don’t want to listen to any of it.”

“So he’s Captain, now? Lizzie called him Mr. Rogers. Like from the tv show you’re too young to remember and I never actually watched.”

“Trust me, I’ve heard plenty about it over the years.” Morgan laughed, working across from her father’s hologram, but never looking at it. “But that’s just how Lizzie is. Everyone else she just calls by their first names, but Steve started putting a fuss up about it, so she started calling him Mr. Rogers instead.” She smirks to herself. “He’s gotten fussy in his old age.”

“Fussier. He was always fussy. He just wore a righteous look and an American Ass and everyone called him a patriot.”

“Well, two out of three of those things are still true.”

“No! He lost the ass?”

“He’s over 150 years old, Tony.”

“He’s a super soldier. He’s not supposed to loose the ass.”

“You’re kind of obsessed with Captain America’s ass.”

“I used to make his suits.”

Morgan laughs and it hits AI Tony in a very real way that he is talking to his daughter. He made his daughter laugh.

💻

“Tony! Mom gave me permission to visit.”

“How’d you weasel that out of her?” Tony asked, turning his hologram away from the manipulation station, despite his mind still definately being on it. It’s great to be an AI.

“I promised to clean my entire room.”

“Oh wow. That’s a hefty promise.”

“I’m not really going to do the entire room. She ever checks under the bed.” She rolls her eyes, and Tony raises an eyebrow at Friday’s security camera.

“I’m thinking she might this time around.”

She rolled her eyes in a way that was so familiar Tony was caught off gaurd for a minute.

“Tony. Hey! Tony!” She waved her hand in front of his face and he snapped his processing power back to attention.

“Hey is for horses, young lady.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes again, and AI Tony felt fond.

He felt.

“Tony! Why do you keep ignoring me?”

“I’m not ignoring you, Lizzie. I’m thinking deeply.”

“But you’re a computer. You have enough processing power to focus on other things and think deeply.”

“You’re right, but I’m running a little slow in my old age.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, “you don’t look that old.”

“Holograms don’t age. I’m a lot older than I look.”

She frowns. “Does that make you sad?”

Tony is about to say no, because he is an AI and incapable of feeling anything, let alone sadness, it’s all just predetermined choices and algorithms except... “yeah, it does.”

She patted the console that was closest to her like she might pat a sad cat. “I’m sorry you can’t get old like everyone else, Tony.”

“Me too.”

🖥

There’s a commotion happening that Tony can pick up even though he only has access to the mics in the lab. There’s some yelling, some smashing, and then there’s a bunch of sparks forming a portal into his lab and a weirdly dressed man with shaking hands and grey streaks in his hair is standing in his lab. Staring at him.

“Can I help you?” Tony asked, reaching out to Friday to activate security protocols and start shutting down anything and everything even remotely vulnerable in the compound.

“I think maybe I can help you, Tony.” The man says, and Tony cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Um, no offense, but I’m actually a computer. An AI. I’m not being held captive or whatever weird conspiracy theory has been floating around the internet. The real Tony Stark is dead. I’m just a copy.”

The man shakes his head and Tony keeps pushing Friday to tell her what’s going on, but he’s been bugging her so much lately that she’s ignoring him. Great.

“You’re not just a copy. You’re a part of his soul.”

“What?” Tony asked, staring at him like he was off his rocker (he was.)

“I second that.” Morgan said, glaring at the newcomer from the doorway.

“Morgan, I made you a promise years ago, that if I could bring him back-“

“He’s been dead for fifty years, Strange. Even if you could bring him back, what good would it do, aside from easing your guilt?” Her eyes are hard and Tony can tell this must be a touchy subject for her. That’s why he feels it pertinent to interject.

“Is that why I’m having feelings? Because AIs don’t usually have feelings.”

Stephen gestured at Tony like an argument had just been won and Morgan glared.

“You’re not touching him.”

“There’s a piece of his soul trapped here, Morgan.”

“He’s a computer!”

“Mom,” Elizabeth murmurs from the doorway. “Ama said she wants to talk to you.”

Morgan’s face falls into her hands and she digs the tips of her fingers into her scalp.

“Mom?”

“I’m coming, honey.” Morgan told her daughter, still frozen and clutching her head. “Tell Ama I’ll be there in a minute.”

Elizabeth left and then it was just the three of them.

Stephen was the first to break the silence. “If you leave him here, there’s always going to be a piece of his soul haunting you.”

“He’s fine right there.”

“He’s not. The longer he stays the more disconnected this piece of his soul becomes from the rest. With enough time it could break off entirely, and the chaos that comes with splitting a soul...” strange sighed. “If you’re not willing to let me try summoning the rest, at least let me send this piece back.”

“I can’t lose him.”

“I’ve been gone for a long time, honey.” Tony spoke up from where his hologram was trapped in a console. “Keeping me here isn’t really helping you anymore. It’s time to let go.”

“You’re a computer!”

“He’s a computer with a piece of your father’s soul, Morgan. It’s understandable that you’re attached, but the longer you leave him here, the more likely his soul will split. It could wrench Tony out of whatever afterlife he’s living and make him miserable for the rest of eternity.”

“Morgan.” Tony said, when Morgan still wouldn’t look up at them. “I don’t know who this guy is, but I think I might agree with him.”

“Stop it.” She said, nearly too quiet for his mics to pick up. “Stop it. Shut up. He’s.. he’s fine. It’s fine. There’s not.. it’s just an AI.”

“An AI with feelings and the capacity to be creative. You have to know that’s not normal.”

Morgan is silent for a few more minutes before shaking her head and straightening her back. “Do whatever you have to.” She tells him, and both Stephen and Tony are struck by how much she looks like Pepper in that moment. She walks away with her head held high and doesn’t even look back to say goodbye.

It hurts.

🖥

On the Astral Plane, Stephen guides Tony’s soul through the process of rejoining it’s larger half, and Tony finds it hard to believe that he, a network of processing power, can project an astral form.

“Do you see how much more translucent you are than I am? It’s because you’re only a fragment. Tony put his soul into designing this AI just in case, and you were so similar to him that his soul might not have recognized his death.”

“Ghost soul. Cool. I actually haven’t heard weirder things, which is odd, but a pleasant surprise. When do I get dead?”

“I have an incantation I can try, but it might hurt.”

“Just do it.”

🖥

“Look who’s back.”

Tony opened his eyes to see the roof of the porch of his dream house with Pepper. He sat up and was greeted with Pepper drinking an ice tea and smiled at him. Pepper, who looked as young as she had been when they’d gotten married. He knew objectively that she’d gotten older, but he hadn’t been online for her death. It was like jumping back in time to before he was an Artificial Intelligence. “You were gone for a while. Glad to have you back.”

“I put a part of my soul in the AI.”

“Yeah,” She nodded, handing him an untouched and perfectly cool glass of tea from the tray beside her. He took it without hesitation, shocked to feel the condensation, the smooth glass, the hard edge of the bottom of it. “I mean, I didn’t know that was where it was, but I knew that some part of you was still trapped there. You had that way of looking off into space sometimes, I think that was when you were over there.” She took another sip of her tea and Tony mimicked her, tasting something for what felt like the first time in fifty years. Probably because it was.

“Was I here before?” He asked, and Pepper nodded.

“You were here when I got here. Waiting for me like we were still newlyweds. Even carried me over the threshold.” She smiled, reaching out and stroking her hand down his cheek. Tony closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. “Figured the least I could do was be waiting for you with some sweet tea.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” He reached for her free hand and dragged her closer to him, needing to feel her solidly against him to prove to himself that it wasn’t just a dream.

“You became a great man. That makes you deserving of just about anything you want.” She followed where he pulled her, settling into his lap and wrapping her arms around his waist. “And now we just have to wait for our baby.”

“Oh god, don’t say that. I don’t want her to be here.”

“And I do?” She laughed, pulling a strand of his hair back into place. “But we all come here. She’ll come and visit us, sometime. It’ll be nice, I promise.”

“I think she hated me, at the end.”

Pepper frowned and ran her thumb over his eyebrow, calling his attention to her. “I know our daughter, Tony. Morgan may have been frustrated, you’re a frustrating man,” she laughed and kissed his forehead, pulling him into a hug. “But she loved you with her whole heart, and nothing could have changed that.”

“I hope you’re right.”

🖥

“Huh,” Tony said, raising an eyebrow at a newly deceased Doctor Strange. He and Pepper were the only ones left in their little afterlife, everyone else having reincarnated long ago and moved on to other after lives. But not them. “I told Pepper we were waiting for someone. Pep! We have a guest.”

“What?” She asked, coming out from the house, a smudge of paint on her right cheek. “Tony who-? Oh! Doctor Strange!”

“I told you we were waiting for someone. Didn’t I tell you?”

“You did, and it’s just as insufferable to hear you say it now as it was a millenium ago.” She leaned down to kiss Tony on the cheek and then looked back up at Stephen. “Won’t you come inside? If I’d known you were coming I would have had something ready for you, but Tony and I stopped bothering with food centuries ago.”

“That’s not entirely true. I still soul magic up a cheese burger every now and then.”

Pepper rolled her eyes and smiled at Stephen’s flabbergasted look. “You don’t have to just stand there, Stephen.”

“Yeah, Strange. Come sit down, take a load off. I’ll keep you company while Pepper does food.” He said, looking at Pepper for approval. She waved him off.

“He’s actually not as useless in the kitchen as he used to be, but it’s been so long since he’s done anything but cheese burgers he might have forgotten.”

Stephen felt like he was watching some kind of television show, an outsider looking into the afterlives of two souls who were obviously extremely close. What was he doing here?

“Honey, I think we broke him. Strange, you with us pal?” Tony got up from his chair, setting aside the bits and bobs he’d been tinkering with for the last 100 years or so. He came down the stairs slowly, hands outstretched to Stephen. “Stephen? Hey, did you leave a piece of your soul back on earth too?” He laughed, trying to break the tension.

“I don’t understand why I’m here.” He said finally, shrugging off Tony’s hand where it touched his forearm. Only then did he realize that his hands weren’t shaking. The scars were still there, but his hands were as steady as they ever were. When he looked back up at Tony his right arm was also heavily scarred, but his face was unmarred. He looked back down at his hands and Tony caught the drift.

“It’s pretty easy to hide scars here, if that’s something you want. I can show you. Pepper’s skin is flawless, but I’ve got a few doosies that I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding. I mean, I know scars give a man character, but not the expense of this face.” He ran his scarred hand over his unscarred cheek. “You wanna take a minute? Let’s sit down.”

Stephen followed Tony’s lead to the porch and sat down to listen to Pepper and Tony recount their experiences in the afterlife.

🖥

Souls don’t really sleep, so when Stephen opens his eyes it’s not because he’d really been sleeping. If he tried hard enough, meditation was nearly sleeping, but there was no astral form to project into while he was “sleeping.”

There was no need. The fate of the universe belonged to someone else now. As much as he hated giving the duty up, Tony and Pepper were right about him deserving a retirement.

Pepper was the first to stir, reading a newly published (on earth) book by the reincarnation of her great grand daughter. “Such talent. Honestly. I wish we had done more of the liberal arts, Tony.” She passed the tablet to Tony, who touched it and knew the entire contents of the book. Pepper still preferred the act of reading, while Tony preferred to cut to the chase.

“I hate the liberal arts, but it is a good book. Strange.” He passed the tablet and Stephen handed it back to Pepper after learning the book’s title.

“I’ll read through it later.” He laced his fingers through Tony’s and let himself play with Pepper’s soft hair. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

There was a long pause and Stephen looked up at Tony and Pepper. They were having a silent conversation, and Stephen felt something like dread settle in his stomach.

“Pepper and I have been thinking.” Tony started before handing the reigns over to Pepper.

She rolled her eyes at Tony and then turned on her side to face Stephen completely, Tony leaning up on his elbow to give himself a better view of them. “We want to reincarnate, Stephen.” She said softly, laying one hand over his cheek. “We love being here with you. We do.” She reiterated when he looked like he was about to protest. “But everyone else we all know is long gone, back to the land of the living. We aren’t talking about any time soon, we want some more time with you here, but... We do want to go back, and we want you to come with us.”

“I can’t imagine living another life without you, Strange. What do you say?” Tony’s hand settled on Pepper’s hip, but his eyes were pleading at Stephen. “Come with us?”

Stephen looked between the two of them, momentarily lost for words before he finally said, “I don’t know how I could say no to that.”

“Ideally, you don’t.” Tony smiled, leaning across Pepper to plant a kiss on Stephen’s cheek just above where Pepper’s hand rested. “And since this is the afterlife, everything’s pretty ideal.”

Pepper elbowed Tony to get him to get off of her and leand in to give Stephen a kiss of her own, just a soft peck on unchapped lips. “I can’t wait to live a life with you, Stephen Strange.”

“Ditto.” Tony said from where he’d collapsed back onto the bed.

“I love you both.” Stephen smiled and Pepper smiled back.

“Ditto.”

#endgame spoilers #tony stark #stephen strange #pepper potts #endgame: drpepperony #drpepperony

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gameridernews · 7 years

Text

Ex-Aid review: Month 11 (Episodes 42-45)

Here we are... the final month of Ex-Aid. With only 4 episodes left, how does the show wrap up?

Well, for starters, let me say this: I'm only going to be covering these episodes the way I would any month of episodes, then will do a separate post where I talk about the show overall - give me time to write that one. Also at the end, I return to my final predictions to see what I got right or wrong.

Oh, a small addendum to the last review since I'm pretty sure I talked about the summer movie: We know now that it's a 1-year-later story, so anything I said about it as an alternate ending to the show... is completely invalid. Oops.

So with that being said... let's tackle the final level.

With Gamedeus unleashed, turns out Masamune wanted to give one last middle finger to the world by reprogramming Gamedeus to let off one hell of a pandemic - everyone in the area has been infected, and it's as bad as when Nico was infected with Gamedeus' virus.

Now I'm gonna be honest, I wasn't sure how to feel about that idea - yeah, it does work as a big finale thing. But it's also what the summer movie was doing, so in that regard it feels redundant. But I warmed up to it since it shows everyone caring for patients in a way that really fits the motif of the show - we're seeing not Riders, but humans, care for the people they want to protect on a personal level. Also Taiga and Nico are wonderful human beings, you guys.

While that's happening, Kiriya and Kuroto are using a clever plan as an excuse to beat the hell out of each other. I was into it once they revealed what they were doing - by continuously infecting themselves with the Gamedeus virus, they build up a resistance, and the end result is a new Doctor Mighty XX Gashat which can eliminate the virus - a shame it doesn't get used to transform, but hey, we know there's at least two different places that could be used now that the show is over...

The Gamedeus Bugster, VERY ironically, is a bit of a small talking point here. Apart from causing a pandemic (which is arguably Masamune's work), and having all the powers of the past Bugsters, the only notable thing about him is the buildup and his quick death once Doctor Mighty XX is delivered to Ex-Aid.

This is something I can understand being a downer, but... we don't have nearly enough time to justify bumping down Masamune in favor of some villain that's just appeared - I didn't expect him to actually stick around because it'd be a waste of time. But I also see it as a miraculous victory - against all odds, they somehow managed to find a way to stop him at the least second.

What they didn't count on was the lingering sanity of Masamune Dan! With no further options, Cronus appears before Ex-Aid and crew can finish off Gamedeus, only to do the job himself and absorb the hell out of Gamedeus' data to become Gamedeus Cronus!

How is Gamedeus Cronus? Well... I know how Rider shows work. We are at that stage where the design process becomes "What can we make with as few new parts as possible?" - which I don't think is unreasonable considering the show's just about over and they're focusing on the next one. That being said, it does what it needs to do well enough - it's Gamedeus but as a Rider. The fusion works within story context.

In a surprising twist, turns out the Ride-Player that's closest to Gamedeus is... Nico! So Masamune, now being perhaps more powerful than the unstoppable Gamedeus, knows EXACTLY what he's doing when he insists on having her challenge him.

He's just screwing with them all now, aiming for the one character who has no Rider belt. Even though Nico is more or less like a Level 10 Ride-Player (d-don't add that to the wiki, that's a joke), she's not unstoppable.

So it's time for big brother Taiga to step in, because it's as he's been saying from the start... only he needs to be the one who fights.

This was a big moment for Taiga, because his motivations are clearer than ever. And he uses both Nico's and... some random Kamen Rider Chronicle Gashat, both at the same time, to transform into Cronus. If you were wondering, TV Asahi just refers to do this "Kamen Rider Cronus (Taiga Hanaya Version)". I'm not sure what the second Gashat is adding aside from it representing Nico, but I do like how this form seems to have access to ALL weapons. Imagine the catharsis of gaining access to this in a proper Chronicle game.

After Taiga gets tossed around a bit, Hiro and Emu show up to remind him that doctors have to work together, and they give him a white coat! That... later we learn that it's okay for him to be a doctor again but that still made me go "Wait, is that legal?" - the three use their strongest forms, reminding us Taiga is in need of something stronger than Level 50...

... then Gamedeus Cronus brings in one last video game trope by revealing that a proper final boss has a second form. Kickass! It's at this point, a true pandemic begins. People become Bugster Viruses, which I thought looked pretty goofy. Masamune is certainly bringing hell on Earth, just like a proper final boss. Turns out he knows exactly what video games are all about.

As an aside, did you know I was considering doing monthly reviews for the next show in the form of video? I'm still undecided, but I am still thinking of how I can keep that simple enough that it won't be hell to edit. I only bring this up because hey, we get our cameo for the next Rider here, Build!

This was a dumb cameo, but a fun kind of dumb. I liked how it involved Genm being mistaken for Ex-Aid, because not only is that going back to misunderstandings from Genm's cameo in Ghost, it's also a resemblance that has not come up in a long time. Made me go "Oh right, it IS weird that they look so alike!"

You gotta take cameos with a grain of salt, but they do admittedly try to capture the basic idea of what that character is like. If Build is anything like this, he seems kinda fun. This whole bit of him wanting a sample from Ex-Aid is actually followed up in the summer movie, which I guess is okay to say now since it's gonna have to be talked about when the upcoming winter movie happens.

Now then, let's talk about heartbreak.

In order to make the people happy, Poppy basically sacrifices her own existence to spread the vaccine to Gamedeus' virus and cure everyone, effectively stopping the pandemic.

This was especially touching when you realize that the most exposure she's had to the general public is being depicted as a deadly Bugster that has even infected others. She's making quite the sacrifice for people who might not even want her alive. You’re breaking my heart, girl.

Then we get what I was most interested in during the episode preview... the baby war!

Ex-Aid brings us back to the Level 1 forms in a clever way, reminding us of its function: Separate the virus from the patient. As everyone switches to the forms we first came to know them for, they beat the Game out of Deus and even perform a chibi Rider Kick together!

But then...

More heartbreak.

With Parad forming a proper bond with Emu, he's found that he lacks something: The chance to redeem himself. He's let a lot of people suffer, and it seems like one fight alongside Emu isn't enough to rid him of his sins - that’s pretty mature of him.

So after Poppy sacrificed herself by using Doctor Mighty XX to turn into a vaccine, Parad does the same to latch onto Gamedeus and finally put an end to it all, so that humans can live in peace.

The day is saved.

Or, you know, fuck you.

Masamune knows what's up. If Parad is gone, that means Ex-Aid - the only one with the power to face him - can't transform. The Riders are effectively powerless to stop him and his time powers. Try as they might, they can't punch something that punches them harder in less than an instant.

The day is ruined. And it looks like this finale is the BAD ending! You beat us, Cronus!

Or, you know, fuck you.

Yes, in a miraculous come-from-behind revival that we get explanations for later, Emu is back in action! And with everyone standing together in the dark setting (Cronus powers are weird), we recreate episode 1's opening scene... with Genm offscreen because of a delayed Continue apparently.

This fight was quick, but fantastic. Everyone gets a piece of Cronus, even Lazer in bike form. Which I now realize is odd for him to revert to, but I guess he figured he'd have one last ride with Emu. No way that phrase can be taken out of context.

Masamune is defeated, and... I'm a little mixed on Masamune, I'll be honest.

The reset from last month was something that came into play because Masamune's Bugster infection intervened, giving them the glowy eyes Emu gets when he does M stuff. While they use that effect again during his last Gamedeus Cronus fight, it... kinda never came into play again. It was just some random thing that served no purpose other than to artificially extend the drama. So... that was pointless.

As for what happened here, with Masamune's final act being to stab himself with his own Gashat, I can only assume he was trying for one more final fight since Graphite used Gashats this way, but it kinda just... kills him. So I'm not sure what to make of it. It doesn't help that they never give it any lip service. He's just gone.

Masamune has been a great villain up to this point, but I feel that he's been all over the place within these final two months and hasn’t been at his best. Still, now that he's gone, peace can properly return. No fakeouts, just status quo.

The rest of the final episode is essentially an epilogue for our beautiful cast.

For starters, I guess the Bugster Virus still lingers, it's just not nearly on the level of Gamedeus. I guess that works, since otherwise we'd have to say goodbye to Kuroto and Kiriya. Speaking of, Kiriya will be taking part in developing medicine that fights against the virus, with the help of the new CEO of Genm Corp: Tsukuru! Burger-san is in chaaaarge! That puts a big smile on my face.

Taiga gets a pretty sweet deal. His efforts have given him the right to be a doctor again, and his previously abandoned hospital has been cleaned up and is now in service as a Bugster Virus hospital. Not only that, Nico has graduated and wants to work for him! Adorable.

Hiro is passing down his expertise to future generations, and even though it's not directly stated, we know that he now has much more respect for the patients now that he's spent plenty of time with Emu.

As for Emu, he relays all that happened to the ministry of health, and is offered the chance to stay in CR. Which I guess is fair since his introduction to it was happenstance.

Lastly is a speech where Emu admits a grim truth: Those infected with the Bugster Virus have been cured... but they have not yet been able to restore the lives lost. As it currently stands, they still exist as data, and when questioned on whether that could be considered "living", Emu says something very mature. When Kuroto first revealed that the victims would be reborn as Bugsters, Emu was strongly against them being data because that can hardly be called living. Has he changed his stance now?

Well... no. He instead believes that medicine has come a long way, and that one day, they WILL find a way to bring these people back properly. The way it was handled was, again, very mature of Emu. I really can't say enough that he's grown up since the beginning.

Kuroto, not so much. But at least he has godly talents.

Since Kuroto got just a bit of Poppy's virus when she sacrificed herself, he was able to restore her! And with the okay of the ministry of health, she will continue her service to CR just like always! I must say, considering this character was too much for me to handle at the beginning, I'm happy to see her stay!

Not only that... when Emu got close to Parad as he sacrificed himself, it seems that he reabsorbed just a bit of Parad's virus, which is how Emu was able to transform during their last fight with Cronus - tightly wrapping it all up, aren't they? Because of that, Parad gets to live.

I'll be honest, I always feel like I need to be more critical when a character is immediately brought back after death... but the tears in my eyes during that moment tell a different story. I guess I’m okay with this.

With our final scene that seems to be a later moment, we randomly get... product placement! Yes, it seems Kuroto was "inspired" to make a new Gashat based on his mysterious encounter, which I'm sure has a form attached to it but it currently just causes the trailer to play. Oddly specific power.

But wait! There were predictions I made. Let's see what they were and how they panned out. There's a lot of em.

First off, I'm gonna just summarize two here: Previews led us to believe Parad might be killed off, as well as Taiga. Aside from me guessing Cronus was the one who killed Parad, I guess I was right in saying they wouldn't kill off either character at this point in the story. I feel the need to address those quickly since they were no-brainers. I even thought they were excessive to say at the time. But...

I think since the heroes now have the Proto Gashats [which contain Saki's data], they’ll be able to convince Hiro well enough to return. That being said… Masamune giving him a new form with no strings attached? Suspicious. Maybe there’ll be some kind of mind control in place in the event Hiro turned on him. This man thinks ahead. It’s gonna take a heavy duty “What it means to be a doctor” speech to shake Hiro from this one.

Okay, I guess Taddle Legacy was a form with no strings attached. It made sense in my head.

Graphite and Parad [might be] successful in infecting Masamune’s belt with the virus of Gamedeus... which results in him becoming a Gamedeus with the unstoppable power of Cronus! That’s, like, twice unstoppable. Perfect for an endgame villain.

I knew it would be a perfect endgame villain! But it turns out this was all Masamune's doing.

I also made a prediction about the ending and talked about how the summer movie was setting itself up as an alternate ending... but again, that turned out to not be the case. But I did say what I thought would be the ending for the show:

I think that the show will have your standard happy ending. Bugsters are gone, CR is disbanded, everyone goes back to their regular lives as doctors/non-doctors. All that needs to be kept in place is the ability to transform, or at the very least modify the gear so it isn’t required anymore. Basically, the show’s ending is more welcome to continuation and crossovers.

And it sure is! But they were surprisingly cool about not undoing much. The Bugster Virus still exists, CR is still needed, and they work in a way for Emu to still have the ability to transform. Which is about as crossover-friendly as you can get.

So that was a show. I'm actually gonna end this review here, because I think it's only fair to have a SEPARATE review to talk about the overall show. The characters, the plot, the style... it's something that would make this post twice as long. So give me some time to write it.

As for the next series, Kamen Rider Build? I am cautiously optimistic! Some believe there is a noticeable coincidental format to Rider shows in which a really good show is followed up by an okay show then followed up by a crappy show. I just take them each as their own thing. There's elements of this new one I find interesting and I look forward to seeing how it presents itself.

With that being said, see you next game, when I analyze Ex-Aid as a whole.

#kamen rider exaid #reviews #feed

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bestfriendforhire · 4 years

Text

Children of BFFH, Entry 50

:Who’s that with Dea?: we questioned almost at once.

:Is she really that jumpy?: questioned Aika.

Maiko firmly said, :No. She looks too curious to be jumpy. I think she’s just bad at pretending to be human.:

:We should go introduce ourselves.: suggested Maimo.

Being in agreement, we all jogged over, surrounding Dea and the guest. The girl whirled around, looking at all of us in surprise. She was obviously faster than us, but what was she?

:Vampire.: we all suggested at once when I checked her temperature, but doubted ourselves just as quickly. She’d be pretty old to be that fast as a vampire, wouldn’t she? Well, there is Cosette… But the girl clearly had a slow-ish heartbeat.

“Valeria, these are the quadruplets. Well, not technically, but sorta quadruplets. Girls, this is Valeria Cornaro, a vampire that Cosette’s adopting.

:Nailed it!: we exclaimed to ourselves. Then we played Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock for order of introduction. Dad got us hooked on Big Bang Theory

“I’m Aiko.” I told her.

“Maiko here.” stated my sister.

“Aika.” added another one with a wave.

“And I’m Maimo.” finished the loser of our game. “So what else are you? You seem pretty fast for a vampire.”

“Hmm..?” questioned the girl, her eyes were still darting around rapidly even when she seemed somewhat focused on one of us.

“You’re really fast for a kid.” asserted Dea. “Young vampires typically aren’t that fast from what we’ve heard.”

“Oh. I am five-hundred-and-sixty-four years old now, though I have trouble believing it at times.” she replied, not seeming to think anything was odd about it. Her speech grew rapid off and on as she talked.

“Five hundred!?” exclaimed Dea, gaping at her. “I thought you were a kid. You’re being adopted, right?”

Valeria nodded. “I am a child.”

“Wait! We’ve got this!” exclaimed Maiko as we quickly tried to remember how that could happen. Our moms taught us a great deal about vampires, wanting us to have the knowledge even though we weren’t going to hunt them as our moms were trained to do.

“You were sleeping for five hundred years!?” questioned Aika instead of continuing our discussion on possibilities.

“Five-hundred-and-fifty-four years.” replied Valeria, nodding again as she stared off toward the gym’s entrance.

“Hello! Have we met?” asked Ella as she joined us.

Valeria rapidly shook her head negatively.

“I’m Ella!” replied Ella as she held out her hand. “I’ll probably forget you over the next hour, but if you spend several hours with me today, I’ll probably be able to remember you. I managed to remember all sorts of things about my friend Rona just yesterday.”

“Ella, that was two weeks ago.” replied Maimo as Valeria very carefully shook Ella’s hand.

“And Rona was here for days.” I added.

“Oh.” stated Ella with a frown. “Well, I still remember things! She had the best expressions!”

My sisters and I giggled, unable to argue.

“She really did.” admitted Maiko.

“Five hundred? I’ve got to ask you about fifteenth century Italy sometime.” stated Luce after jogging over to us with her brothers. “I’m Luce, and these are my brothers, Four and Aid.”

“James Michael Somerset IV is my actual name, but everyone does call me ‘Four’ to avoid confusion with our father.” explained Four with a smile.

Then Aid said, “I’m Aiden Gruffydd Somerset, and our sister’s full name is Alma Lucy Somerset, like our mother.”

Valeria blinked rapidly, her eyes darting between them. Then she curtsied and said, “I am Valeria Cornaro. I’ll be living with Cosette Bourbon, so I might become Valeria Bourbon. Is that how things are done here? I never asked, and Vito’s memories aren’t always the most helpful.”

“His memories? He can share them!?” questioned Ella excitedly.

Valeria nodded and said, “Through his blood.”

“Sorry, Ella, but that won’t work for you.” stated Luce as she hugged Ella from behind. “You’d probably get some information, but it wouldn’t last any better than anything else.”

“Oh.” replied Ella glumly, before looking off at the ceiling. Blinking and looking around, she stared at Valeria in surprise. “Hi! I’m Ella!”

Valeria looked startled, but shook Ella’s hand as she introduced herself again.

“Four, you’ll be helping Valeria with basic exercises today. Be careful.” stated Auntie Raine after appearing next to us. “She’s not used to Portentia’s blood yet.”

“I will.” he replied.

“You can introduce Doc, Aspy, and Stormcrow after our exercises. We’re starting a little early today” explained Auntie Raine before reappearing at the far end of the gym.

“You heard her, guys. Let’s get in our places.” ordered Four. “Valeria, you’re with me.”

My sisters and I had a little debate about whether or not someone should have warned Valeria about Four’s magic, but we decided that it’d make no difference with her living here. Despite her innate resistance to mind-affecting spells as a vampire, Four’s magic was obviously working by the end of the physical exercise. Of course, we knew it would.

“Do you know anything about magic?” questioned Four as Auntie Raine started assisting with the magical lessons.

“I have started learning how to use my vampiric abilities over the past couple weeks. I can also do this.” she told him, and he disappeared.

My sisters and I exclaimed “Four!?”

“All of you have to check this out!” yelled Four, loud enough to echo through the gym.

When we arrived by Valeria, we could see Four through a doorway, standing in a void.

“Whoa.” whispered Luce, obviously as surprised as we were.

“Show the adults!” exclaimed Aid with a grin.

Valeria shrugged, and Four vanished again.

“Where is he!?” asked Luce.

“She moved the door!” exclaimed Four off to our right.

“Momma Mila, please say you’re showing this to Dad! He’s going to flip!” exclaimed Aika in response to the rest of our thoughts.

“And show us the recording of his reaction later.” added our moms, having arrived by us. Then one of them said, “James and Alma just had to be out this morning, didn’t they.”

“THIS IS SO COOL!” exclaimed Crazy, appearing next to Four with Messy in her grip. “Guys, there are walls! Valeria, can you trap us in here!?”

The door vanished, and a number of the adults instantly started speaking over each other.

Valeria replied faster than the four of us could follow, looking around nervously.

“Shhh… Go back to practice.” stated Auntie Raine, motioning everyone to leave. Then she gently patted Valeria’s shoulder, saying, “You’re fine. No one’s mad. Mind opening the door again? Crazy will probably complain, but Four and Messy will probably want out.”

Valeria nodded, and the door instantly reappeared..

“Hey! I haven’t cracked it yet!” exclaimed Crazy.

“Sure, but I’m supposed to be working with her on magic.” replied Four, walking out.

“I’m going to stay longer as well. We’ll pop out after she gives up.” asserted Messy, looking amused as she watched Crazy attack something we couldn’t see. She was sitting at an elaborate table, perfectly comfortable despite the lack of a discernable floor.

“Where did you get a table and chair!?” exclaimed Valeria in obvious surprise.

Messy demonstrated, causing another table to appear in a flash of light before vanishing in a cloud of darkness.

Valeria’s mouth dropped open as she said something I couldn’t understand.

“No swearing, or the Boss might give you a frowny face when he sees you next.” stated Auntie Raine.

Valeria looked at her in surprise and started speaking very rapidly.

“Yes, I’ve studied many languages, even dated ones. You need to practice speaking slowly. Mind if I balance your energy out?” questioned Raine.

“What do you mean?” questioned Valeria.

“Please, shut the do-” started Crazy when the door vanished.

“I’ll make you feel more comfortable.” replied Auntie Raine.

“Please, do!” exclaimed Valeria in surprise.

Shadow poured off her like smoke from a wet bonfire. When the shadows cleared, Valeria did seem less twitchy.

“How do you feel?” questioned Auntie Raine.

“I don’t feel like I will burst anymore, but… the hunger is more noticeable again.” replied Valeria.

Auntie Raine nodded and said, “Sorry, but I shouldn’t do anything about that.”

“Think three strains of vampires is enough?” teased Four.

“I don’t want to experiment on someone, even with their permission.” replied Auntie Raine with a shrug. “Back to work.” She appeared halfway across the room to help one of the adults with a spell.

Four started trying different ways to get Valeria to notice residual energy, but we all knew that might be tough for her. Many vampires simply couldn’t do any magic that didn’t come from being a vampire. Vito’s strain was the strongest with residual energy, but nearly as rare as Papak’s. Most vampires came from Zachary’s blood.

“I wasn’t done yet!” complained Crazy when she and Messy suddenly appeared.

“You weren’t even close to breaking out.” teased Messy, grinning at her.

“But you did it!” exclaimed Crazy, frowning at her.

“Should’ve paid more attention to how.” replied Messy.

“How!?” asked Valeria, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Eh… I think you’ll have to study a while before you want to attempt that explanation, since I have considerable advantages with magic.” explained Messy apologetically.

Four laughed and said, “That is a dramatic understatement. I have tremendous advantages. You and Crazy are like cheat codes incarnate.”

“No. No arguing.” insisted Aid when Messy opened her mouth.

Crazy giggled, and I instantly fought my nervousness, paranoid about what she might be plotting. How did people really manage their feelings without a connection to their siblings? Just knowing that my sisters also felt nervous when Crazy giggled always helped me be certain I wasn’t simply being paranoid.

:We are being paranoid.: insisted Aika.

:But paranoia is a necessity as Crazy’s friend.: insisted Maiko.

:Totally!: agreed Maimo.

As we practiced our lessons, the four of us continued trying to work out how Valeria’s magic worked. Dad wasn’t any help with the how when we arrived in his lab later, but he already was thinking up different uses for that type of magic. My sisters and I all placed bets on how quickly he’d be asking the Boss and Auntie Cosette about getting Valeria to let him do some tests on that room she created. Dad loved doing experiments.

#Children of BFFH #Children #of #BFFH #Jovial Times #Jovial #Times #Fantasy #Fiction #Story

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childrencryinncoffee-blog · 7 years

Text

My Dad Walked Away, Why Can't I?

I've been surviving on fumes the last few days and it's getting frustrating and I'm building a resentment. I'm worried about my mental health and it seems like no one cares, so I'm wondering why I should. I haven't taken any of my medications for the last week and if anyone's noticed, no one is saying anything. And this is where the resentment is building. My husband just worked the last 16 out of 24 hours and he is now in bed, sleeping, at 1pm, after arriving home at around 10am.

And lucky me, I just got a 90 minute break while writing because Ivy decided to scream from her MamaRoo and I had to stop and feed her again, even though she just nursed 45 minutes before. And of course Derrick gets up and I'm torn between guilt because I want him to sleep and resentment because of course he wants to sweep in and be the hero, suddenly, when I've been tired for days--but Ivy wants me, or she wanted my breasts at least.

But at least when I was done nursing her I could put her down and go eat. But even eating is pissing me off lately. I've gained 12 pounds in the last month and I don't know what to do about it. I work the hardest in this house to have the best and healthiest diet; vegetables, fruit, lean meats, nuts, seeds, non-dairy products, whatever I can eat to help with my supply AND be healthy for not just Ivy, but me too. And yet, I'm gaining weight. And fucking Derrick doesn't even have to try and he still looks like he's barely 20 and never had a kid. I look like I'm a tired obese, 45 year old woman, who's definitely birthed a half dozen or more kids. And I'm fucking tired, but it doesn't matter.

I can't remember the last time I had a conversation with someone who wasn't being generic; including my husband. It's funny; when people (my family) come over to visit and they strike up a conversation with Derrick, they always ask him how he is, how he's feeling, how work is treating him and they stir up this bravada in him to be more confident, work harder, ask for more pay, more hours, whatever. They ask about his artwork and what he's drawing lately and his new games, even though they don't understand them. Wanna know the conversation I get? Weight. The kids. And how my house is a mess because I don't know how to get on my kids to do a better job. I'm constantly reminded that I am a fat, lazy mom. Which makes my anxieties worse; because rather than relaxing, I'm more motivated to clean, straighten up, talk about the newest health trend and how even though I'm exhausted all the time, I'm trying to lose the weight. My husband can just grab a beer, or whatever and not think twice. I have to think about the calories, the carbs and the sugar. I usually get so upset about it, I self sabotage.

I haven't been sleeping well, nor taking my medications correctly, but no one asks me. The kids constant ask Derrick, "Dad, does your back hurt?" "Daddy, are you tired?" "Daddy do you have to work today?" "Dad does your shoulder hurt?"

Where's my concern? I hurt. I'm in pain. I'm exhausted.

I've been seeing things--literally--a tall, white man in my shower, spiders and snakes and a vicious wolf in the kids' room. I told all of this to Derrick. The conversation didn't even last 5 minutes. He asked to watch Jeopardy, but while I lay there, half pissed off at an ignored conversation, half pissed off that he was paying more attention to his phone than the show he just asked me to watch with him. I roll over and go to bed.

I've been dealing with thoughts of self-harm and suicide and even running away. I don't feel wanted or needed. I don't feel pursued or active affection. Derrick hadn't realized it'd been probably close to a year since he bought me flowers, until I made a snide remark and rather than him wanting to surprise his wife, he buys flowers the next morning out of guilt and I display them (happily) on Instagram--even though there was no geneuity. But I have to display this facade of a happy marriage because if I don't I'm reminded that all the negativity associated with it is my fault; I'm choosing to be negative, unhappy, displeased, I'm making something out of it. A bill comes up, we're short to pay it this week, because I was adamant to have oysters. We're short on gas money, I shouldn't have went and spent that $30 at NYX. We need more diapers, toilet paper and dish soap, but I was hoping to make new mom-friends and wasted $50 and the only new thing I ended up with was a virus. (Thanks lady who was sick and yet HAD to come ride in our carpool AND sit right next to me at the table, coughing on me all night, whining about her "cold", ya should've stayed home and NOT put me at risk to bring home this illness to my newborn).

I can't do anything about anything for the next few weeks, as we're fucking broke as hell. I can't "escape". I can't go get Starbucks, or walk through Target. I can't go to play dates. I can't even go to a DBSA meeting. The NAMI meeting was this morning, but Derrick got home late and we really don't have the gas money for me to drive across town anyway. I have no one to talk to---because the conversation is either ignored, dismissed or changed. That and I think my own family is full of stigmatic bullshit. They claim they understand my mental illness and how dangerous it could be...bullshit. If they cared about my mental well-being and me working my ass of to avoid PPP, they'd have an open dialogue with me about everything. We would talk about my stressors, insecurities and anxieties and not fall asleep or become distracted or just drop the subject. I'M NOT SLEEPING AND I'M FUCKING SEEING THINGS AND MY HUSBAND CARES MORE ABOUT HIS SHOULDER HURTING AND HIS SLEEP.

The last time I had a Mixed State of both Depression and Mania---I tucked the baby into bed, made sure everyone else was asleep and I got blackout drunk and mutilated my body. You'd think my husband would care about that NOT happening again; but the conversation always comes back around to making ME feel guilty because he has to work--which yeah, he does have to work to provide for the family he helped create--but his responsibilities don't stop there.

Why isn't my sleep a priority? And the guilt of watching him try to stay awake while holding the baby and nodding off or mid snore while his eyes are open, don't help me to relax. And trying to nap with him when he got home from work because I haven't slept either, but the baby woke up, so I had to get up. I had to demand my sleep at 4am Friday morning because I'd spent the previous 36 hours up and awake, feeding a baby nearly EVERY 30 minutes and so when Derrick shoved my shoulder to wake up and nurse her, I snapped and he walked his ass to the fridge to warm her some expressed breastmilk.

I'm the one with the diagnosed, medication-needed-for-stability, mental illness, but me being "okay" isn't a priority. The kids and my family all worry about Derrick all the time; how's he sleeping with a new baby, is he drowsy while driving, does his back and shoulder hurt, how'd his x-rays come out, when does he see the PM doctor, blah blah blah---of course I build a resentment. My mom thinks the band-aid of her watching the baby while I take ONE one hour nap is supposed to "cure" me. I live with Schizoaffective Disorder--my number one medication IS sleep. I'm pushing the envelope and walking the line daily. Fantasizing about both sleep and death. Derrick gets all the sympathy, let him truly run the entire household and then I won't be here to even complain about the sympathy.

I'm so tired of looking in the mirror and hating what I see--a tired, worn out, grouchy bitch. Honestly, I am a bitch--Derrick's bosses say so, but rather than do anything about it, he kisses their ass because their opinions are actually worth something. I think about leaving all the time, and I KNOW if I spoke up about that to either Derrick or my mom, I'd have it thrown in my face that I'm being spoiled. And it's not even about having things my way, it is about FEELING like I am an important part of this family and actually want to be treated like a priority and not a fucking afterthought. I am, as a mother, expected to be a juggler of many balls; it's an expectation of me. Derrick is solely expected to be the breadwinner and head of household. That's it. Do you know how many different hats I wear and the only "rewards" I am rewarded with is adult conversations with my mom--conversations about losing weight, gaining weight, a new waist cincher, new diet pills, OR I am constantly reminded how my kids don't clean right, don't straighten right, don't do this right and I don't get on them enough. I just wanna leave.

But I know everyone will side with Derrick, even and especially my family--because I am "beyond lucky" to have a man like Derrick in my life and I should feel grateful and not have any complaints. The dude takes the time to learn all the special moves of his characters in all his video games; does he even know the name NOT THE BOOK, but the name of the author of my favorite book, nope.

And I keep making the mistake, like a hyper puppy, of TRYING to have a relationship with him; I tag him in articles or blogs I've read and found relatable and would like to discuss with him and I'm literally seen him swipe away the notification and ignore the tag and continue his game playing. I buy him books and they collect dust. Grant my books collect dust too, because I can't really juggle a book with pages that need turning and use my hands to keep my huge breasts off of Ivy's tiny nostrils while nursing her. And I'm so fucking exhausted, that one paragraph makes my eyes blink. But Derrick can spend 4 hours playing a video game.

The priorities in this house and so out of whack and I hate that I'm wavering at the edge of cliff; hanging on just for June 21 because that's my psychiatrist appointment. I can't rely on DBSA meetings because Derrick's fucked up schedule, or I'm just too exhausted, or there's no gas money. And I've been waiting and waiting for the CARES Program to call me back about finding me a new therapist, but nothing yet. SO I sit here, trying to hold on, talking myself down because no one else will, reminding myself that the 21st isn't too far away--but even when the 21st is here, what difference will that make? I don't see any changes within this household on the horizon at all. And that's really heartbreaking.

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Oiκοςpiel, Book I is an opera in five acts, taking the player on a surreal journey of music, canine programmers, bear assassinations, unions, and a relationship between player and game world, breathing life into it through the manipulation of objects and sending their will to move through the computer.

Developer David Kanaga's heady, almost overwhelming work has earned him an IGF nomination for the Nuovo Award. Gamasutra sought him out to talk about the process of Oiκοςpiel, Book I's creation, and how that, and all are aspects, became a part of an extensive message told through imagery, interactivity, and sound.

I've been working with games for about 8 years. I'm probably best known for doing interactive music designs on projects such as Proteus (with Ed Key), Panoramical (with Fernando Ramallo, et al) and Dyad (w Shawn McGrath). My blog, wombflashforest, has some of my writings on musical game theory.

Before working explicitly in the field, and as a kid loving games, I was brought up Zelda, Conker, group improv, Fruityloops, and D&D -- Josh Bothun, who coded the website, was the one to introduce me to game dev as a doable thing and got me into it!

I'd always wanted to compose for a game in the AAA style. In late 2014, while working on Panoramical, Fernando Ramallo showed me the unity landscape sculpting tool and the unity asset store, and I realized it'd be possible to make my own Frankenstein-ian AAA game with these tools.

I sculpted some landscapes, imagined different activities on the landscapes, and had a desire to run with a pack of dogs and to trigger a few things, including perspective shifts, between First, Second, Third person, etc. So, I bought the dogs and I hired Fernando to make the tools for triggering things, and he made these amazing scripts that after about a month of debugging together, basically never crashed for me again, which means I was able to write the game without coding and without running into fatal "bugs"-- a huge boon.

Unity, the "Oik OS" tools, coded by Fernando Ramallo, Ableton, Money.

A little over two years.

Videogames already have a generic tendency to be operatic, and I wanted Oiκοςpiel to riff on this - that engulfing quality which is the totality of the screen and sound system (outputs), the inputs, and the throughputs which hold it all together. I wanted to be able to accommodate any possible form that I could manage within the game - weaving them together was much of the difficulty and pleasure of working.

If I could code, there would bits that feel more like TurboTax and Bloomberg Terminal in there, so there was this synthetic thing going on, piecing diverse components together, and then there was some kind of pun-warhammering going on, pitting the Pluarality of opera (which means, plurally, works) and dispersion of Form in a playful skirmish with the Unity of the development environment and the idea of Totality and coherence. So, there's also, on yet another scale, the attempt at Unionization in the plot, but also the scabby dog and Koch Games who want to prevent the union.

As an example of this process in action - a murky image of global warming, and the industry of its denial, inspires much of the game's dread. To "write" with this concept or mood, I select potent signs… e.g. GLOBALLY: the Earth, the biosphere, glowing coltan ore, the Epic scale, the north pole, travel, airplane, shipping container; WARMLY: the image of Heat, leads idea of Energy (en-ergos, means In Work), leads to the words of Wind turbines and oil pumpjacks.

With all of these keywords, I search the asset store and find these, and buy them. Thus, an image becomes a word becomes a commodity. And now in Unity, for example, with the wind turbine, which was first just a word, I attach the speed of its rotor to the mouse input scrubber, and it becomes a cyborg creature with the player, who assumes the allegorical role of Wind. And player, being Wind, e.g. Atmospheric- is thus considered the air which the dog breathes.

The internal mythology of the game expands in this way, constructing itself out of words, assets, mechanics, all treated 'flatly' as one substance. In general, the potency of imagery was something I was always keen to follow formally-intuitively, the chains of associations give rise to the 'shaggy dog tale' style.

I like to think of the game as a kind of instrument or animal, and the player is its external world, and the inputs are its various peripheral nerves or sense organs. The outputs are its voice and visible body, the song it sings and movement it dances as it experiences the world of the player's "breath", while the inner game topology is a kind of mentality or central nervous system holding the animal's experience all together.

The game is a kind of bildungsroman about the life of this imaginary "animal", which is actually a piece of material software or musical instrument.

Mu Cartographer & Everything are both enchanting. Excited to dig into Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor & Quadrilateral Cowboy. Inside was really lovely and expensive!

Money of course! In Oiκοςpiel, Book I, everyone is aching to unionize except the loyal dogs. Really, though, I wonder - would indie devs ever collectively band together in a kind of Union-like? Obviously, classical unions are not designed for the kind of precarious freelance / boom / bust economy most indies are caught in, where people are constantly being employed by and employing each other, with ambiguous hierarchies, and no clear "boss"-- but some kind of imitation of the idea might work. Just as a little daydream… from the game, the GPU : General Precariat Union.. just for fun-.

Imagine, each member - and it's all types of devs, programmers, designers, artists, musicians, producers--pays some percentage of their annual earnings as union dues. It could be a flat rate or progressive, ultimately voted on by all members. Let's say 5%. It's an added expense, sure, but I'd guess possible to budget into expenses as a given. Compared to steam's 30% cut of sales (and for many devs, I imagine a large percentage of income is thru steam), it's not a whole lot.

And the idea of sharing money is not new in indie games - itch.io allows the developers to choose their percentage of a game's cut; humble bundles collectivize profits amongst a select group; recent game sales with 100% of profits going to ACLU and other organizations showcase the flexibility of game pricing and profit sharing. Game developers could be more nearly poised to try on some collectivism like this than other culture industries, which I think are not as familiar with the idea of a variable, the means by which collective sharing can be formalized and automated.

So, now, imagine, the GPU has come together, and everyone is potting 5% of their earnings into a collective bin. What next? How would the "union" money be spent? This should be voted on. And for instance, it could be split like this:

50 percent - Internal welfare 25 percent - External action 25 percent - Administration

I've put 50 percent towards that first category, because I imagine that a crucial purpose of the union would be as a mechanism of internal redistribution - that this might end up being the primary function, just like collective bargaining is for the classical union. The history of computer games has coincided with the history of neo-liberal economics - thus, the lack of a safety net has been perceived by many as a state of nature, as opposed to what it is - an explicit set of policy decisions functioning as instruments of ambient violence directed against the poor in order to help the rich grow richer.

Our current US government is not about to better things in this regard - so it's an even greater reminder that it's time to step in at as big a scale as possible. Right now, some people are beautifully supportive about helping each other with Patreons, game-tippings, donations, kickstarters, etc. But these systems of aid are still hyper-individualized - person-to-person - and not adequate. Something more ambient is needed.

The Union could step in, and walk the walk with all this "We love indie games!" patriotism, which doesn't recognize the dark underbelly of this love, which is so much love giving rise to so much concentrated wealth, on the one hand, and so much precarity, mental and physical illness, etc, on the other. It would step in, and play the part of the proto-nanny nurse state for the indie games world. Welfare would most likely take the form of basic cash assistance, although it would be great to help with health care and other such costs if that were practical. The 50% (or whatever) of union income could be netted out equally to all members, a la Universal Basic Income, or it could be inversely redistributed to members based on need.

I would favor strong redistributive measures as an attempt at creating a safety net which ideally would allow game developers the freedom to practice their craft without its being always put to the service of pleasing the marketplace's whims. Thus, richer members would join the union at a loss of profit, but a gain of creative biodiversity (and yes, the top dogs benefit very much from this too-- it's more energy), while poorer members would hopefully join at a profit. The profit would be small, but perhaps an ambience of inter-class solidarity would be formalized to good effect? I believe many of those more well off who pay their dues into the union's pool would do so gladly, and understand this giving as a way to share gratitude for the kind of value indies are making off of the commons community effort.

There is so much unpaid and underpaid labor which makes the game community the vital space that it is. Might even some scoundrels like Notch join in? He was a big supporter of Proteus early on, which I'm grateful for, even while his politics since becoming a tycoon have disappointed me very much. Although, did he support Bernie before he supported Trump, and he's not the only one - once ran into a man in a hot tub who did the same thing - he loves indie games -. Notch, would you join an indie game union that might help the form flourish?

There is so much unpaid labor happening, because people love the work, and paying into a pool would be one way to express gratitude for that, and also a means of joining a community committed to rising up together. Also it would be a small measure of protection against future busts into precarity for even the more well off (who are always afraid of sliding back down).

Aside from the internal welfare, there would obviously be administrative costs. At a bare minimum, a regular voting period would need to be administered at regular intervals, which would probably be a fairly involved systems procedure. This would require a dynamic voting website (though maybe could be as easy as Google form?) and backend needing to be managed. There should be a forum for union members, where ideas for union action are proposed and discussed. I would encourage quarterly voting, as it could stimulate more regular interest amongst members in shaping union policy, and create an ambience of micro-political efficacy which wouldn't be lost in its ripple-out effects. Admin jobs would need to paid, as a matter of principle, as well as to get them done well. The union should be an attractive offer, and its forum a lively place to hang out.

The budget for "external action" would be determined by vote. This could be anything whatsoever. Events at GDC and other conferences, emergency/strike funds, "salt" training, protest sign-making, attorney hiring, even a stash of investments to grow union capital? Party? I imagine this forum of coming up with proposals would be quite a fun project. Again, it would be a little microcosm of the larger political theater, and a kind of training in a way, at least tuning in to a system which allows smaller voices to be heard.

Anyway, that's all just some dreaming, a bit of a D&D campaign of the imagination, but I would love to join something like this (hungry to be organized!), even if it ended up being a chapter of the UAW or something…

I do think material basic needs and free time and their shared symbolic medium MONEY are very clearly the biggest hurdles facing indie devs, as with people in general. And money is very interesting because it is an Ideal-Real, equal parts fiction and material. Check out this info-graphic.

It's tempting to think something must be either one or the other, fictive or real, but with money, that's not the case. And we live in a world conditioned by what Mark Fisher calls the "business ontology"-- which we could also call the ontology of money, one quirky feature of which is that the Real and the Fictional are intimately entangled.

No wonder people are trying to come to terms with "post-truth", "fake news", etc. The business ontology treats these flatly. In any case, I think one of the sad Real fictions attached to money is that each person is responsible for their own, and earns precisely what their merit deems them worthy of (if merit is defined by the market, this is tautological) -- I think a healthier Real fiction would recognize that money is an atmosphere that we breathe-- a commons constituted from a surplus of value generated by a huge community of devs-- and that it should be formalized and shared accordingly.

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. You can find the rest by clicking here.

Unity, the "Oik OS" tools, coded by Fernando Ramallo, Ableton, Money.

A little over two years.

The game is a kind of bildungsroman about the life of this imaginary "animal", which is actually a piece of material software or musical instrument.

Mu Cartographer & Everything are both enchanting. Excited to dig into Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor & Quadrilateral Cowboy. Inside was really lovely and expensive!

50 percent - Internal welfare 25 percent - External action 25 percent - Administration

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